Microsoft confirmed today at the 2011 CES that the next generation of the Windows operating system will indeed run on ARM processors, following wild rumors and speculation this past week.
Windows on ARM processors means that the operating system is now capable of running on a plethora of mobile devices, thus opening up an entirely new market segment for Microsoft. Is this the end of Windows Phone? Will Windows 8 be the new Microsoft mobile OS?
EDIT (01/06): Not much more info was released in last night’s keynote speech by Steve Ballmer. However, the implications of having the full-fledged Windows operating system on a mobile device such as a phone are tremendous. Android and iOS will have to pick up some speed to compete with the OS that has been in the making since 1985 and has excellent hardware and software support e.g.: multi-threading, scheduling, peripheral support, .NET Framework, WPF, Win32 API, etc., etc.
Apparently, the DirectX team has had a blog since late April of this year it’s just not very popular I guess.
They’ve posted a shipload of information over the last couple of months, so if you’re like me and had no idea this existed, you’ll have quite some reading to catch up to. It’s mostly about Windows 7 and the new graphics APIs (Direct2D, DirectWrite, etc.) but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Yeah, I don’t have the DX11 logo yet…Today the August 2009 DirectX SDK was released on MSDN, strangely enough the August SDK was released in September.
This release contains the first official release of Direct3D 11 (RTM), which was previously only a technical preview. According to the release notes, this version of Direct3D 11 will only work on the RTM version of Windows 7, not on the RC and Beta versions. So I guess only vendors and MSDN subscribers will be able to develop software until Windows 7 hits the retail market.
There’s also the issue of pure Direct3D 11 hardware not being sold yet but that should be right around the corner if the SDK is here.
So today marks the first week of Windows 7 RTM usage and I have to say that I like it. As I said before, Vista’s gaming performance was sub par but it looks like Windows 7 has picked up the slack.
It simply seems like the same system performs better with Windows 7, it’s definitely not simply a Vista update/Service Pack. And I’m happy to report that Fallout 3 (for the players) works OK on Windows 7 although there is the occasional crash and Alt-Tabbing is out of the question it seems.
Another very good thing thing I’ve noticed is the lack of UAC pop-ups, the only ones I’ve seen are when I try to run downloaded software – which is the same as in Windows XP.
Maybe in the long run some quirks will show up but for now I’m a happy camper indeed.
Windows 7 RTM was released for MSDN subscribers today so I’m taking this chance to upgrade to Windows 7 early on. I’ve been using Vista fulltime a bit over a year now and have been a bit disappointed in the long run with its performance when it comes to gaming and other intense apps.
Although I’ve been disappointed with Vista’s gaming performance, everything else has been smooth sailing. In fact a bunch of features that are apparently introduced in Windows 7 (Start Search), were already available in Vista.
Anyway, I’ll soon find out if the Windows 7 talk is all hype or if there’s some truth to the claims I’ve been hearing.
OK, so only one day after I publicly whined “where is the DX SDK?” Microsoft has released the March 2009 version. Go figure. Get it here at DirectX 2009 SDK @ MS Download.
Also, there seems to be some interesting stuff bundled with this version of the SDK, here’s my take on the important stuff:
- Technical Previews
- Direct2D
- DirectWrite
- DXGI 1.1
- PIX works on the Windows 7 beta
- Several updated samples
Check out the details at the link posted above. Also, it doesn’t look like the online MSDN library docs have been updated yet but usually that happens pretty quickly.
I wonder what kind of development is going on at Microsoft as there hasn’t been an update for the DirectX SDK since November of 2008. This is quite out-of-sync with their regular release schedule of a new SDK every 3 months.
My guess would be that with the release date of Windows 7 inching closer, the development for DirectX 11 has to be completed soon. Of course this is 100% speculation.
If anyone has a clue, let me know.
Just released, get it while it’s hot.
It doesn’t look like there are any DirectX 11 previews in there. Is it my imagination or were those supposed to be in it? Thanks Aras for the confirmation that the DirectX 11 preview are actually in there.
EDIT2: The new DirectX redistributable was released today.
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