Microsoft revealed back at CES in January that it will develop the next Windows for more platforms than just x86. The strong growing mobile platform ARM is one of these and during an event in Las Vegas the software giant showed an early version of Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10, powered by a 1 GHz ARM processor.
Windows 8 will not be ready until 2012, but the development of the operating system is under way. During MIX Developer Conference Microsoft showed its latest version of the browser Internet Explorer and decided to rveal the platform it was running on. With a 1 GHz ARM processor under the hood the test platform was charged with Microsoft’s next generation oeprating system and showed that an energy efficient ARM platform is enough to run the future operating system.
ARM has made impressive progress in the last two years and from relatively low-performing in mobile phones, now smartphones and tablets have enough power for more advanced uses. In 2011 we will see many dual-core ARM processors on the market. NVIDIA even has plans to launch a commercial quad-core ARM processor in Q3. The system processor is developed under the code-name Kal-El and is expected to launch as Tegra 3 and operate at freqencies up to 1.5 GHz.
With the dominance of ARM among ultramobiles Microsoft has decided to broaden its Windows operating system instead of creating a tablet version of Windows Phone 7. Among others Windows 8 will have a more touch-friendly interface and require less resources.
Microsoft’s focus under MIX Deveoper Conference was on the browser Internet Explorer 10 that was released in an early test version for the public. The browser will sport an improved support for CSS3 and more efficient GPU acceleration of HTML5. More information and download link for the test version of Internet Explorer 10 can be found at Microsoft’s website.
Source: Engadget
