Building Windows 8 Collaborating to deliver Windows RT PCs

Windows 8 and Windows RT each reached the RTM milestone, and we are hard at work in collaboration with ecosystem partners, including PC manufacturers, Silicon partners, and other component suppliers, to complete high quality Windows RT and Windows 8 PCs that we think you’ll love. We’re very excited about the designs PC manufacturing partners have built on the foundation of Windows 8 and Windows RT.

The breadth of Windows 8 Intel- and AMD-based designs from our PC manufacturing partners will continue to push the envelope with powerful computing and innovative design. You can expect to see everything from ultra-thin sleek designs with stunning high-resolution displays, to beautifully designed All-In-One PCs with large immersive displays complete with touch, to high-power towers rocking multiple graphics cards and high-performance storage arrays. In addition, this broad range of PCs will provide price and feature combinations that allow every customer to find a PC that fits their needs and lifestyle perfectly.

We are particularly excited about the new low power x86 Windows 8 PCs that will take advantage of Intel’s SoC platform innovations to provide an always on and always connected experience (known as connected standby). Just recently, Lenovo announced the ThinkPad Tablet 2, which offers an outstanding combination of new features built on the latest Intel ATOM® processor. We’ll cover the benefits of this scenario later in the post.

Microsoft has worked very hard with this release to provide the tools and support to contribute to new PCs that are more reliable, faster, use fewer system resources, and have improved software loads than comparable Windows 7 PCs. From the newest Ultrabook™ to the most powerful and extensible workstations, Windows 8 PCs are on the way.

Windows RT begins a new era of ARM-based PCs, where we are working with our Silicon and PC manufacturing partners to bring a whole new set of innovations to market. In an earlier post, Building Windows for the ARM processor architecture, we focused on the detailed engineering work required to create Windows RT. In the remainder of this blog I would like to provide an update on our efforts to collaborate across the ecosystem in bringing new Windows RT PCs to market. But first, let’s briefly recap the key points from the previous post: 

• Windows RT shares significant code with Windows 8 and has been developed for and will be sold and supported as a part of the largest computing ecosystem in the world.
• We have achieved our goal of one Windows binary for all Windows RT SoC platforms from NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments, each of which has developed innovative ARM CPUs that form the basis of a complete system.
• Delivering Windows RT PCs has been about building out a new system for the first time—a completely new ecosystem of PCs providing opportunities for PC makers to bring to life a new generation of PCs with new capabilities, starting with ARM-based processors.
• Windows RT PCs are thin and light in industrial design, and have long battery life and integrated quality. These PCs have all been designed and manufactured expressly for Windows RT.
• PC makers will provide Windows RT PCs as integrated, end-to-end products that include hardware, firmware, and Windows RT software. Windows RT software will not be sold or distributed independent of a new Windows RT PC, just as you would expect from a consumer electronics device that relies on unique and integrated pairings of hardware and software. Over the useful lifetime of the PC, the provided software will be serviced and improved.

If you are following Windows RT, perhaps you have taken note of the Asus Tablet 600 (Windows RT) announcement or Microsoft’s own Surface RT™ news. Along with Asus, we are excited to share that there will be ARM-based PC designs from Dell, Lenovo, and Samsung running Windows RT.

You will need to stay tuned for more details; PC manufacturers will be unveiling their products as we approach the Windows 8 and Windows RT launch. What I can say is the spectrum of form factors and peripherals being developed to meet each unique customer’s computing needs is unique in the industry.

“Dell’s tablet for Windows RT is going to take advantage of the capabilities the new ecosystem offers to help customers do more at work and home. We’re excited to be Microsoft’s strategic partner, and look forward to sharing more soon.”

- Sam Burd, Vice President, Dell PC Product Group

The uniqueness of our approach starts with a new way of working across partners to engineer a PC—a collaboration that brings the best of all parties together to deliver end-to-end experiences that are integrated and optimized from the chipset to the experience.

It’s also worth taking a moment to describe how our collaboration on these PC efforts has been different than in any other Windows release. Our engineering collaboration on these Windows RT PCs has been strong, collaborating with the PC manufacturers, Silicon partners, and Operators to focus on hardware, software and services integration. Each respective partner was committed to sharing early iterations of their products, whether it was a SoC bring-up board, early builds of Windows RT, firmware and drivers, or hundreds of pre-release PC hardware samples (such as the ones featured in earlier demonstrations and videos). Product designs were informed and revised by our collective efforts through development and testing. As a result, all of these Windows RT PCs will have consistent fast and fluid touch interactions, long battery life, connected standby, and are beautiful, thin, and light designs. All of these are designed to make the most of the capabilities of Windows RT.

This is a snapshot of an actual pre-release Windows RT PC, showing a very early engineering prototype and the evolution to its current form.