Fresh off the announcements around Windows on Arm at Microsoft Build 2024, the Arm Developer Program visited Morocco to attend GITEX in Marrakesh, Morocco. I had the pleasure of joining the Arm team, along with fellow Windows on Arm Ambassadors, for a collaboration with Microsoft to launch Windows on Arm to the developer community in North Africa. We also spent time at the amazing 1337 coding school at the UM6P Campus in the neighboring city of Ben Guerir.
Windows on Arm represents an important evolution in end-user computing. From tablets to laptops and desktops, it is now possible to have the native and familiar Windows 11 desktop experience on Arm-powered hardware.
Many people ask why this is important or significant. I remind them that Arm cores provide best-in-class performance for even the most demanding workloads, including AI, thanks to Arm's heritage in developing cores for systems with stringent latency and processing requirements across various domains. Additionally, Arm's cores are more efficient in terms of power utilization, making the cores ubiquitous in many sectors and use cases, from embedded and IoT systems to mobile devices and now PCs.As an end user, this translates to the smoother running of applications with reduced latency on demanding tasks and longer battery life without the need for bulky and complicated cooling systems.
This was demonstrated with the Windows on Arm Lenovo ThinkPad X13s laptop during our travels, which lasted across several days of demos without needing a charge. The device also demonstrates the strong performance of Windows applications built natively for Arm, something that I introduced developers to as part of my talk.
Windows 11 on Arm will unlock opportunities for .Net developers to experience the benefits of Arm and also include AI into their applications. With a native Arm build of Visual Studio available, the Windows on Arm Lenovo ThinkPad x13s laptop along with the Windows Dev Kit 2023 (the Windows on Arm Developer Kit) shine as development workstations. To put this to the test I made use of the Windows Dev Kit 2023 as a primary workstation for several to see how smooth the transition to an Arm-only Windows experience would be. It proved to be completely seamless. As a developer, many different IDEs and toolchains present on my Windows machine but this was not an issue.
I was able to run native Arm builds of many applications from productivity (Microsoft Office and Teams) to developer tools (Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, CLang) as well as language runtimes (.Net, Python, NodeJS) with excellent performance. Where there were no native Arm binaries available, I could leverage the ARM64EC ABI built into Windows on Arm to run x86_64 software without any issues. This included Android Studio, Silicon Labs Simplicity Studio and even the Arduino IDE.
After Arm’s Shola Akinrolie gave an opening address, which was followed by update following his visit to Build and deeply technical discussion on performance on Windows on Arm. I then gave a talk to developers at the 1337 coding school directly from the Windows Developer Kit.
I started by covering my journey using Windows 11 on Arm exclusively for everyday usage and the benefits of building Arm-native applications. This included insights into the seamless experience provided by native Arm support and emulation, allowing non-Arm Windows executables to work efficiently on Windows on Arm.
Among the many benefits of Windows on Arm, one feature called Windows Sandbox was presented to developers as an easy way to test native desktop applications. This is done in a local isolated environment with full GUI support and is completed isolated from the host operating system (OS) while performing at the level as the native OS.This can be very useful not just for developers but also for cybersecurity testing and is a feature that the audience were keen to try out for themselves. For those who wish to explore cloud computing with Azure, it was an ideal opportunity to cover the Cobalt and Ampere instances, as well as full Windows 11 on Arm available in Azure.
The talk finished with a demo of running LlamA3 -8B unoptimized on the Arm core where it performed with a token rate that made it useable in real-time. This was a day before the launch of Arm Kleidi, which will further optimize AI workloads on Arm cores. Even LlamA agreed that running on Arm was better!
The audience at 1337 was one of the most skilled audiences I have ever engaged with, which is a reflection of the amazing work done in curriculum development and providing students with the resources and guided learning to set them up for success. We were able to ignite an interest in Windows on Arm and equip developers with the skills and access to further learning paths and resources provided by Arm to enable them to build natively for Windows on Arm.
The GITEX event itself culminated the journey where we partnered with the team at Microsoft to present Windows on Arm to both business and technical stakeholders. The Arm booth became a popular spot, and many great connections and conversations were held on topics ranging from Windows on Arm to cloud and embedded systems and the future of AI.
Windows on Arm will unlock the value of working within the Arm ecosystem, enabling users to leverage the features and benefits of Arm technology. Whether using Arm locally or in the cloud, users benefit from the low power usage, which not only reduces the costs of Arm-based computing but also supports sustainability.
Developers are excited about the future and see the possibilities of building on Arm. The interest in the Arm Developer program was overwhelming and I’m sure that the new members will find the number of resources available to all kinds of developers equally staggering. We will begin to see a proliferation of ARM64 binaries available for all applications, as Windows on Arm takes the world by storm in the coming year.
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