ARM64EC, emulation from ARM improves in Windows 11

The reality is that these days all the news is made by Windows 11. Microsoft’s new operating system continues to make headlines, although they are not always positive. Yesterday, meeting the established deadlines, the first build of Windows 11 arrived. And it was indicated that they were going to evaluate the operation of processors of at least the seventh generation of Intel. But there was also talk of a new binary emulation interface in Windows 11 ARM called ARM64EC. We are going to explain to you what it consists of beyond the acronyms and the importance of this technology.

Windows 11 ARM will improve application emulation

First of all, it should be noted that devices with ARM processors are upgrading to Windows 11. This way there is no room for fragmentation, and it would be small if it had been due to the small impact on sales. Now Microsoft wants to offer developers a new Compatible Emulation (EC) interface that will allow developers to update their apps to work natively on ARM. All this, although there are dependencies or plugins that do not work at the moment in ARM.

With ARM64EC developers can “Mix and match freely” between the ARM64EC emulation layer and native ARM 64 by running ARM64EC in (in parts) an application, while any native ARM 64 code will run under Windows 11 in ARM’s built-in emulation. According to Microsoft, this has great benefits as we indicate below:

Previously, redoing an app for ARM required redoing the entire app. This was a great native experience for users enjoying the full potential of ARM. However, for developers it could mean all or nothing, as everything must be rebuilt for users to benefit.

With ARM64EC, you can start small and gradually adapt the application. You can identify parts of your code that would benefit the most from native performance and rebuild them as ARM64EC. The rest of the app will still be as functional as emulated, but the parts recompiled like ARM64EC will have native speed. Later, other areas of the app can be recompiled to improve performance and improve the autonomy of an application.

Great news for users who trust that ARM is the future. Now Windows makes it easier for you to partially or totally recompile an application and enjoy applications that work better every day in ARM.

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