Microsoft chances its ARM

The next version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system (OS), which is expected to be released as Windows 8 next year, will run on tiny ARM processors found in mobile phones and tablet PCs, as well as desktop and laptop chips, the company announced last week at the International CES 2011 event in Las Vegas.

The move is the software giant’s latest ploy to make sure that Windows is not eclipsed by rival operating systems from the likes of Apple and Google in the race for dominance of the burgeoning mobile device market. It also represents the first time that Microsoft has brought other chip makers into its mobile fold alongside long-standing CPU partners Intel and AMD.

ARM and mobile device specialists Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments (TI) are already working with Microsoft to perfect suitable system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors, paving the way for the new Windows OS to be embedded into a wide range of small form factor electronic devices.

At CES, Microsoft ran a technology demonstration showing how the new OS and Office applications could be compiled to run natively on ARM CPU architecture, supporting hardware-accelerated graphics and web browsing, media playback, USB device support, printing and other features usually tied to desktop PCs and laptops built on x86 processor architectures.

“Increasingly, customers expect the full range of capability from any device,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in his CES keynote address. “[They expect the] power and breadth of software that is available for today’s laptop, the long battery life and always-on capabilities of a mobile phone, great browsing, productivity and media experiences – in addition to the basics: printing, and support for all of the hardware devices and peripherals.”

Building a single OS that provides options for both the desktop PC and mobile world – if that is what Microsoft intends to do – is an ambitious target. Microsoft and its partners will have to work hard to make sure that hardware drivers and software applications developed for desktop PCs can be tweaked to work on mobile hardware, which probably explains the early heads-up on an OS not expected to surface before the middle of 2012. To date, information about the features Windows 8 will include has been sketchy at best.

The company sought to downplay the complexity of the challenge by showing Microsoft Office running on a laptop powered by Texas Instruments’ ARM-based OMAP processor and printing off a Word document on an Epson printer. Using the hardware acceleration in another device based on Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor, it showed off specially adapted versions of PowerPoint and Internet Explorer 9 running HD video. It also demonstrated the OS running on Qualcomm’s SnapDragon SoC architecture.

“That took a small amount of work from Epson building on top of a new level of class drivers in Windows,” Microsoft corporate vice president Mike Angiulo told assembled press and analysts at CES. “There are a ton of differences that need to be worked through – input/output (I/O) buses and how memory works and how drive controllers work as well as power management – but this is all just engineering.”

The move was undoubtedly prompted by Microsoft’s desire to win a bigger share of the growing mobile OS market, currently dominated by Android, iOS and Symbian.

Research published by Gartner in September 2010 showed Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS held just 8.7 per of the global market for mobile device sales in 2009, with Symbian taking 46.9 per cent, Research in Motion (BlackBerry) accounting for 19.9 per cent and Apple 14.4 per cent. Though it accounted for only 3.9 per cent in 2009, Android’s share was expected to rise to 29.6 per cent of mobile device sales by 2014, with Windows Phone slipping to 3.9 per cent by the same date.

The versatility of the SoC design – which shrinks major components such as processors, memory controllers, peripherals and communications chips into a single silicon package, thereby reducing power requirements and improving battery life – means Windows could also be used in a much broader range of electronic gadgets and devices if Microsoft is successful in harnessing the ARM partner ecosystem to its cause. These could include everything from smart electricity meters and in-car computers to medical instruments and gaming devices.