[HN Gopher] Blender is Native on Windows 11 on Arm
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Blender is Native on Windows 11 on Arm
Author : thunderbong
Score : 82 points
Date : 2025-08-09 02:26 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thurrott.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thurrott.com)
| bhouston wrote:
| Nice! I would expect that it was relatively straight foward given
| that Blender is native on MacOS ARM and also iOS ARM?
|
| Blender is just so nice to use these days.
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| And Linux ARM, I would expect?
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Yes, Blender was native on my ARM phone several years ago
| already - until its GPU requirements went up.
| geraldcombs wrote:
| For us (Wireshark) the difficulty wasn't with our own codebase,
| but with getting our dependencies ported over. Most libraries
| built just fine, but some strongly assumed that "Windows" meant
| "x86".
|
| It's not just Windows, either. Many libraries (particularly
| ones that use Autotools) are absolutely blind to the notion
| that you might want a universal binary on macOS.
| astrange wrote:
| When we ported OpenJDK to macOS, I ended up producing a
| universal binary by having the Makefile run itself to produce
| HotSpot twice, and then gluing them together with `lipo`
| afterwards. There isn't really a better way when the actual
| project configurations are different.
|
| IIRC it was eventually removed because nobody else needed to
| do such a thing so it was hard to maintain.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Sure. How else would you build a universal binary then?
| Given the low-level nature of the language not many tasks
| can be usefully shared between different architectures.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| Why has it taken so long to get the Windows ecosystem fully on
| ARM? Apple's transition only took a year or two.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| 1.apple controls the hardware. they only need to focus on
| supporting a handful of skus. windows needs to support way more
| which they don't directly control
|
| 2. The software development toolchain is highly focussed
|
| 3. they committed. there are no more intel cpus so developers
| can either adapt or die. windows by contrast has x86 and arm
| builds going forward. that means a larger surface area for
| developers to target and they will avoid that kind of pain if
| they can.
|
| 4. microsoft management is all over the place and lacks the
| focus that apple has. Apple doesn't do everything right but
| when they want to do something well. it shows. even their
| failures are polished.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Apple had ARM versions of it's own software ready to go on
| day one.
|
| Apple's developer IDE was ready to go on day one.
|
| Apple's Rosetta translation layer was much more widely
| compatible with legacy x86 software than Microsoft's Prism.
| duped wrote:
| Apple stopped selling Intel Macs and the ARM Macs were the
| better machines when they did
| kimixa wrote:
| In addition to the other reasons listed below, Apple employee's
| provided the initial ARM porting patches in the first place.
|
| It sounds like Microsoft was involved in this project (though
| the text seems to imply Qualcomm might have been the primary
| contributor), it remains that they _didn 't_ do it however many
| years ago when Windows on ARM was first released.
| TylerE wrote:
| Also Apple had done it before - twice, really. 68k -> PPC
| ('member FAT binaries?) -> Intel -> ARM
| dkiebd wrote:
| Microsoft has already made several attempts at ARM. It's not
| clear that this attempt will be the last one, in fact, it's
| quite probable that it will be abandoned. So why invest in it.
| p_ing wrote:
| That's not the correct question to ask. There's no reason to
| fully transition the ecosystem to any one singular
| architecture, Microsoft has always been happy since the origin
| of NT 3.1 to run some flavor of Windows on non-x86
| architectures, but they were never dominate because x86 is
| dominate, and rightfully so.
| motoboi wrote:
| Rosetta and universal binaries is the answer. Things just
| worked and gave people a working scaffold to do incremental
| improvement.
|
| Much easier than a big bang replacement.
| SlowTao wrote:
| It feels like the internal interest in Windows ARM comes in
| waves, that they keep letting it slide backwards.
|
| I mean they have been trying since Windows RT on the original
| surface tablet 13 years ago.
| imiric wrote:
| To be fair, the Surface Pro 11 ARM is _really_ good. It 's
| the best _actual_ computer in a tablet form factor I 've ever
| used. iPads and Android tablets are crippled by their OS, and
| x86 tablets are bulky, hot, underperform, and/or have poor
| battery life.
|
| Performance of every day tasks on the Surface is excellent,
| the battery lasts forever, as expected, and Microsoft has
| done a great job with their x86 emulation layer (Prism). Most
| x86 apps (including games!) work without any involvement from
| the user. In the few cases I ran into issues, tweaking the
| emulation settings for the app fixed the issue, and I think
| there was only one app that refused to run, though I don't
| remember what it was right now. Performance even with
| emulation is pretty good.
|
| This experience is light years ahead of Windows RT, and even
| Windows on ARM from a few years ago.
|
| So I don't think Microsoft's interest in ARM is waning
| anytime soon. They're clearly heavily invested in it, and the
| hard work has been paying off.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > Why has it taken so long to get the Windows ecosystem fully
| on ARM? Apple's transition only took a year or two.
|
| No incentive for third parties. Apple dictates the hardware,
| and can say "no more x86" and devs either have to jump on board
| or abandon Apple.
|
| No such thing with Windows. x86 is still the default on windows
| laptops, and will likely be for the foreseeable future. The X
| elite still seems to have no successor in the pipeline, and the
| few laptops that have it don't outsell x86 so why bother.
| acchow wrote:
| Apple also stopped selling _new_ x86 machines. You had no
| choice but to port to Arm
| bangaladore wrote:
| Simple answer: the Windows ecosystem is vastly larger than
| Apple's in hardware, software, and use cases.
| jayd16 wrote:
| They stopped x86 support so it's move or be gone. It's survivor
| bias to say it's fully on arm, no?
| segphault wrote:
| Apple's development stack and a large portion of their third-
| party developer base already had fairly mature ARM support for
| iOS. It made for a much smoother transition. Microsoft's lack
| of meaningful mobile footprint meant that they started from
| further behind.
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