What’s coming next from Microsoft? The company offered a preview at the next generation of Windows during a special press event at the big Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on Wednesday in Las Vegas. That’s not to say Windows 7 users have to panic about any imminent upgrade issues. “Windows 8,” as some have dubbed the new software, may not be released for another year or longer. But, as Hardware Central details, the key aspect of Microsoft’s preview was to show off Windows running on the ARM architecture and to attract developer support. “Microsoft Office running natively on ARM … was shown as a demonstration of the full depth and breadth of Windows platform capabilities on ARM architecture,” the company said.
At an invitation-only press conference Wednesday, Microsoft demonstrated that the next version of Windows — reportedly code-named Windows 8 — will support so-called “system-on-a-chip” (SoC) architectures.
These include, as has been rumored in recent weeks, ARM SoCs.
The ARM processors will be built by NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, according to Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows and Windows Live Division.
