Microsoft said Windows on Arm a “world-class platform for any workload” (first-class platform for any workload). The statement comes in conjunction with the achievement of an important software milestone: I am in fact olderre 7,000 applications and games who have obtained the status of “compatible” on the Works on Windows on Arm review portal.
Driving this acceleration is the growth in demand from the market for energy-efficient and high-performance portable devices. Klaus Diaconu, Partner Director at Microsoft, highlighted how user demand is pushing both chip manufacturers and OEM partners to invest massively in architecture:
“Productivity apps remain the cornerstone of how people work on Windows. Whether managing projects, collaborating with teammates, organizing information, or communicating across teams, these apps are essential to our customers’ daily work. The growing list of productivity apps now available reflects both customer demand and the growing momentum of developers building with Arm as the world-class Windows platform.”
Historically, the main obstacle to the spread of Windows systems based on Arm architecture was the performance gap of x86/x64 code emulation and the limited availability of native software. The latest release Windows 11 introduced significant refinements to the internal emulation enginereducing overhead and increasing overall performance. Nonetheless, the real turning point lies in the progressive native conversion of software catalogs.
Through the App Assure initiative and the dedicated Arm Advisory Service, Microsoft provides technical consultancy, workshops and direct engineering support to software houses to facilitate porting.
Clearly one can object to how many of the 7,000 applications cataloged are actually compiled natively for the ISA Arm64 and how many instead exploit the x86 emulation level, which although improved, can still present slight performance differences compared to direct execution on native architectures. However, it is already an important achievement.
On the hardware front, the platform Windows on Arm has so far pivoted mainly on Qualcomm Snapdragon X solutionsadopted extensively in the Microsoft Surface Copilot+ PC line of devices. However, the roadmap for autumn predicts the arrival of the devices NVIDIA RTX Spark and a further refinement of the compatibility of the platform with the software, thanks to the contribution of NVIDIA – announcements in this regard have also been made in the last few hours.
