All articles tagged with #arm64
Valve ported Half-Life: Alyx to ARM64 to run natively on the Steam Frame’s Snapdragon Gen 3 chip, and the game is included for free with the $1,059 headset. The port uses foveated rendering and eye tracking to deliver a full PC VR experience on a standalone device, with mods and fan-created levels supported, though it trades some graphical fidelity for portability.
Apple has informed Mac App Store developers with universal macOS apps requiring macOS 13+ that they can drop Intel-based Mac support by building for arm64 only and resubmitting; Intel users can continue using the last compatible version. This aligns with macOS 27 Golden Gate removing Intel support and the plan to discontinue Rosetta 2 after macOS 27 (with some exceptions for certain games), reducing download sizes and simplifying development.
The Amiga-derived AROS research operating system has been ported to boot bare-metal on the Raspberry Pi in both 32-bit and 64-bit builds, marking an ARM-native Amiga-compatible OS. It’s early and experimental, with the Pi3 as the current target and discussions of Pi4/Zero2W support, continuing a multi-platform lineage that includes x86, PPC, and RISCV to keep the Amiga legacy alive beyond traditional hardware.
NVIDIA released a first preview of its CUDA toolkit for the RTX Spark platform, enabling native Arm64 optimization on Windows-on-Arm devices. Developers can review Arm64 support, plan porting strategies, and test builds as RTX Spark hardware becomes available (not yet shipping to consumers). Sega has already released AAA titles optimized for RTX Spark, signaling growing ecosystem momentum and future Spark iterations across new CPU/GPU architectures.
Tom’s Guide tests running Windows 11 on Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo via Parallels Desktop. Using 4GB of vRAM and 2 CPU cores, Windows runs but feels slow—benchmarked with Geekbench (2770 single, 4090 multi) and a 4K-to-1080p HandBrake test (~23:24), notably slower than macOS. 3DMark tests freeze in the VM, and storage constraints (split 256GB into 128GB per OS) and the need to buy Parallels ($119/year) plus Windows Home license ($139) push total costs toward roughly $857. Given the compromises, it’s not worth the effort for a budget MacBook; a native Windows laptop is a better buy.
Microsoft announced that the latest Windows 11 Media Creation Tool (version 26100.6584) is currently broken on Windows 10 22H2 PCs and ARM64 devices, causing unexpected closures without error messages. Users are advised to download ISO files directly from Microsoft as a workaround, and Microsoft is working on a fix for future updates.
Linux 6.17 aims to remove a longstanding 4K page size limitation in the kernel's handling of ELF program headers, a restriction dating back to 1993, to improve compatibility with modern ELF files on ARM64 platforms with 4K pages.
Microsoft has released official Windows 11 ISOs for Arm64-based PCs, allowing users to clean install the OS on devices with Arm64 processors, including the latest Snapdragon X Copilot+ PCs. While the ISOs are primarily intended for virtual machines, they can also be used for direct installation on Arm64 hardware. However, older Snapdragon SoCs may require driver integration into the ISO before booting, a process that involves extracting and repackaging .wim files. This release marks a significant step in Microsoft's support for the Windows on Arm platform.
Google has released a Chrome Canary beta version with native Arm64 support for Windows, addressing a major downside for Windows PCs with Arm64 processors. The new version is expected to significantly improve Chrome performance on Arm64 PCs, eliminating the need to run Chrome in emulation mode. This move comes as Qualcomm is set to release its Snapdragon X Elite chip, promising improved performance and power efficiency. The release of native Arm64 support for Chrome on Windows may pave the way for increased adoption of Arm-based Windows laptops in the future.
Google is preparing a native version of its Chrome browser for Windows on Arm, as spotted in the latest nightly builds of Chrome in the Canary channel. This move comes as a surprise, as Google has previously shown no sign of supporting Windows on Arm. While Microsoft has long supported an Arm version of its Edge browser, Google's support for Windows on Arm is a significant development for the future of the platform, especially with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite processors on the horizon.
The Gentoo Linux project has announced that its Portage package manager will now offer binary packages for direct download and installation, a move that will benefit users on ARM64 and x86_64 (AMD64) platforms by providing a mix of binary and source updates. This update aims to ease the installation process, particularly on systems with limited resources, by reducing the need for source-based compilation. More information is available on the Gentoo.org blog post.
In the final part of their series on how Ars Technica is hosted in the cloud, the article discusses leftover configuration details, including their liveblogging system and authoritative DNS. They also explore the possibility of shifting their infrastructure to AWS's cloud-based 64-bit ARM service offerings, examining the potential benefits in terms of performance and costs. The article provides a recap of their current setup, which includes WordPress, WooCommerce, XenForo, and various other components, all running as containers in ECS tasks.