Twisting my ARM for the future ….

[a.quaihoi]

Soooo…… with the world moving over to ARM architecture, will there be a ground up rebuilt version of AM for ARM ? Seriously those Apple Silicone machines pack some punch for the level power efficiency, now Microsoft is following suit too with Windows 11. Sure each platform has translation layers to emulate non arm coded apps but eventually native applications will need to be written. I’m actually dying to see AM run on  a M1 Max / Ultra through emulated Windows 11 which has support for x86 coded apps with non native arm support - apparently those machines can certainly cut the mustard with multiple layers of emulation happening … just thinking about the future …. And if anyone has a new Mac Studio - please try running AM in windows 11 , running inside parallels or VM ware and report back 

[robcat2075]

A ground up re-write just for ARM?... I doubt that can happen. Some years ago former A:M programmer Ken Baer told me that A:M has been rewritten from the "ground up" twice in its history. Both times it took six programmers about two years to get it to being stable and usable again.

However, compilers are more powerful now than they were back then...
 

Windows 11 on ARM gets big boost with rollout of ARM64EC

Quote

 

Microsoft just announced (opens in new tab) the general availability of ARM64EC, which allows developers to build applications with a combination of x64 and ARM code. For example, the bulk of an app could run natively on ARM code, while a few extensions or specific features could rely on x64 code running through emulation. The end result is better app performance on Windows 11 on ARM devices.

 

With ARM64EC, developers can gradually migrate applications to ARM without having to wait to see immediate returns. Microsoft explained the benefits of ARM64EC in a developer blog post when the feature was first announced.

 

"With ARM64EC, you can choose to start small and build incrementally. You can identify a part of your codebase that would benefit most from native performance and rebuild it as ARM64EC," explained Microsoft. "The rest of the app will remain fully functional as emulated x64, but the recompiled ARM64EC parts will now have native speed.  Over time, you can recompile more of the app as ARM64EC to further improve performance and conserve battery life for your app’s customers."

 

 

It's not clear how much work the programmer has to do to to "recompile" for ARM, but maybe this sort of half-emulated/half-native is what could be done. Steffen is the expert, not me.

I don't know if A:M runs on Windows on ARM or not. The Microsoft Surface Pro X is an ARM PC. I can't imagine them selling a PC that locks out all existing windows apps but then... a lot of their customers just run MS office apps and those have been made availabe in ARM versions.

 

[a.quaihoi]

Is there a reason why we cannot get additional contracted developers to work with Steffen on these future versions with him overlooking development and managing it, be it ARM64EC ? Im not a developer, but Ive certainly had experience developing and managing software which had to be re written twice because of changes in html, then flash no longer being supported on mobile devices, the projects were not as complex as rebuilding AM but it was a lot of resources and time, Im sure if there was a crowd funding campaign of sorts all the users could help fund the development of our favourite software, and while the process is happening, we could implement a wish list of new features that could be implemented in to the build timeline - here's hoping !

Itry running AM in emulation on Arm the instant I get my hands on a new arm machine