Microsoft’s Windows on Arm woes may finally be over. As part of the company’s new Copilot+ AI PC initiative, which includes new Surfaces and partner systems running Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips, Microsoft says it has rebuilt core components of Windows 11 to better support Arm-based hardware and AI. That includes a new kernel, compiler, and most importantly, an emulator named “Prism” for running older x86 and x64 apps.
You’d be forgiven for being skeptical, though. Since the launch of Windows RT-powered Surface in 2012, Microsoft has proven it can’t be trusted to deliver a decent OS experience on Arm. That device couldn’t run legacy x86 apps (who would want to do that in Windows, right?), and it was far slower than PCs with Intel and AMD CPUs. Windows on Arm slowly improved over the years, to the point where it had serviceable emulation on the Surface Pro 9 5G. But that slate still couldn’t keep up with its Intel-equipped sibling, especially when it struggled to emulate popular apps like Chrome.
Microsoft says it reworked Windows 11 schedulers to take advantage of Arm capabilities and AI workloads. There’s also a new driver compute model that recognizes neural engines more like how Windows sees CPUs and GPUs, as well as AI APIs built directly into the OS. Basically, Arm hardware should no longer feel like an afterthought and developers should be able to tap into AI capabilities more easily.
While Microsoft is pushing the availability of more native Arm apps for Windows 11, it’s hard to deny the importance of supporting older software. That’s where the Prism emulator comes in. Microsoft claims it’s around 20 percent faster than its previous emulator, and it also worked to improve the number of apps that it supports.
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