[Info-vax] VSI licensing policy (again), was: Re: VSI has a new CEO

[Lawrence D’Oliveiro]

On Wednesday, September 22, 2021 at 6:54:24 PM UTC+12, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <6851ade5-b1ad-4062... at googlegroups.com>,
> dgso... at gmail.com (David Goodwin) wrote: 
> 
>> The most recent consumer-oriented effort is just Windows 10 (or 11) 
>> but on an ARM processor. Apparently it works fine.
>
> It does, within the limits of its CPU power. The currently available 
> devices do not have leading-edge ARM processors.

It’s worth noting that these are not “ARM processors” in any general sense, but only a specific family of Qualcomm Snapdragon chips. Remember, the ARM ecosystem is huge, with a range of companies and volume of unit shipments that completely dwarf x86. For example, the Raspberry π runs a Broadcom processor. Samsung also make their own ARM chips. And of course we know about Apple’s ones.

The problem is that ARM lacks a standardized BIOS layer like has been a traditional part of x86. Without such a system, Windows is lost. Linux has its “device tree” system for coping with that, which does mean compiling custom kernels for different families of SoCs. But that’s a lot easier than a Windows compile.

>> Its got some sort of binary translation/emulation thing (like 
>> Apples Rosetta 2 I guess) that lets it run unmodified x86 software.

32-bit only, as I pointed out.