Microsoft’s Windows 10 Support For Arm64 Chips Is Still On The Rise!

[Nexy]

Microsoft is offering more and more support for the Arm64 chip architecture, despite some initial criticism and some potential setbacks in terms of how Windows 10 (OS) and the various apps will work on these processors. The latest Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19559 for the Fast Ring update cycle adds Arm64 support to Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor for Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise users.

 

Microsoft's new preview built lets Arm64 devices running Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise use Microsoft's hypervisor, Hyper-V

 

The reason why this is a big deal is that with Hyper-V being activated can yield higher performance from virtual machines on Windows. This is due to VMs running on a hypervisor that can run at a lower level than when running on top of another OS. Even if you don't usually use Virtual Machines, you may still want to use the Windows Sandbox feature. This feature a one-click Windows 10 VM that allows you to browse safely or download risky files without having it contaminating your computer.

The Hyper-V performance on Arm64 devices compared to x86/AMD64 chips is still yet to be seen. However, Microsoft is still making significant strides in supporting Arm processors and devices.

 

Arm64 is officially gaining traction by manufacturers

Microsoft has been one of the main Arm architecture's biggest supports in the past few years. The Arm architecture initially suffered from a lack of support for third-party applications, and their supporting processors were primarily designed for mobile phones with very minimal power envelopes. This has changed recently by having Qualcomm releasing the first genuinely desktop-class Snapdragon 8cx processor, which in a modified version powers the Microsoft's Surface Pro X.

While the processor's performance doesn't blow away the competition, but it shows that Arm CPUs can finally run desktop-class OSs and apps. While on the server processor side, Arm's "Neoverse" series of processors have recently demonstrated that they can provide not just good value for the money, but can hold their own in terms of overall performance in data centers.

While Arm has been making significant strides in creating a desktop processor, but Arm still has quite a bit of work to do before more developers jump on board and build native support from apps for the Arm architecture.