Arm-powered Windows machines have been on the market for quite some time now, but they never really took off in a big way. I, for one, have always been a bit skeptical about Arm-powered Windows machines going mainstream, and I had plenty of convincing reasons to doubt the possibility of Windows on Arm becoming a compelling alternative to traditional x86-based systems.

Fast-forward to 2024, and we're now witnessing a paradigm shift in Windows computing. That's right, Windows on Arm is finally hitting its stride — seriously, for real this time — and I'm stoked to witness the innovation it will unlock. There are a couple of things that are different this time around, and I truly believe that a lot of missing pieces of the puzzle have come together now to actually make it work.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X SoC is great

Finally able to stand out on its own in the competition

One of the biggest reasons why I'm a Windows on Arm believer this time is because we finally have a chip that's capable of putting a good fight against not only some of the x86 processors from the likes of Intel, but also the Apple Silicon. The latter is more crucial for Windows on Arm to flourish because we've had Arm processors like the Snapdragon 8cx for a while, but none of them were significant enough to make people or developers take Windows on Arm seriously.

The performance of the Snapdragon 8cx series chips was simply never enough to make them a serious consideration. Those chips had no chance against many of Intel's H-series chips and Apple's MacBooks that were sailing smoothly on ARM processors. That, however, is no longer the case because the new Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips are quite performant. Our benchmarks suggest that the Snapdragon X Elite is powerful enough to go against many other modern CPUs out there.

Battery life has never really been an issue for Arm-based laptops anyway, and we have some early benchmarks suggesting that the new Snapdragon X SoC-powered laptops have pretty good battery life. Not only can you expect good standby times from these machines, but they should be able to churn out better performance on battery, too.

App support is a lot better now

More apps now work natively on Windows on ARM

There's still plenty of work to be done in this space, but I'm happy to report that we already have a good number of apps that work natively on Windows on Arm right now. In case you haven't been paying attention, I'd like to remind you that Adobe has announced native versions of Premiere Pro and Illustrator, and we also have native Arm versions of various web browsers like Opera, Chrome, Vivaldi, and more.

I'm sure we'll have a healthier list of apps that run natively on Arm in the future, but I'd say we have a pretty good start for now. At least the ones that are known to be notoriously sluggish in emulation are all here, and I'm sure more developers will port their apps as people start taking note of the transition and the future of Arm computing. Thankfully, Microsoft says its Prism x86 emulation layer will handle things in the meantime.

Microsoft Prism is a key piece of the puzzle

Is Prism x86 emulation as good as Apple's Rosetta 2?

It is true that a lot of popular Windows apps now have a native Arm format for X Elite laptops, but that's not really enough for Windows on Arm to take off in a big way. You see, Windows has been running on x86 CPUs for a very long time and that means a vast majority of apps are still coded to run on x86 CPUs. This is where the x86 emulation comes into the picture, and they'll all run in emulation mode with a translation layer known as "Prism."

Microsoft's Prism, in case you don't know, will ship with the upcoming 24H2 update for Windows 11, and it'll convert code on the fly from x86 to Arm. It's similar to Apple's Rosetta 2 emulation layer for its Apple Silicon Macs, which played a huge role in helping the Macs transition from x86 chips to Apple Silicon. Microsoft says its new Prism layer is as efficient as Apple's Rosetta 2, promising 2x faster performance in single-core tasks and 3x improvement in multi-core workloads. I haven't had a chance to test the emulation performance, but this Signal65 report commissioned by Microsoft shows some promising results.

According to the report, the emulation performance of the new Surface Laptop with Snapdragon X Elite is better than Intel’s 12th-gen Core i7 processor, and is on-par with the performance of Intel Core Ultra 7 155H running the same apps. That's impressive considering how the new Surface Laptop was emulating the app that was being tested, while the other two were running it natively. So it appears as though the new Prism emulation layer is indeed quite powerful, and that's great news — and a big win — for Windows on Arm.

A new era in computing

There's still a lot of ground to be covered, but it's clear that Windows on ARM truly has the potential to be more than just a niche experiment. I must say that the convergence of powerful hardware with new Snapdragon chips, improved Windows compatibility, and a growing ecosystem of applications is creating a compelling case for this platform. I only see it getting better from here, and the future of Windows on Arm is looking brighter than ever.