Microsoft announced Arm64EC last year, which was a new Application Binary Interface (ABI) for Windows 11 on ARM. This has facilitated the development of interoperable applications that run on both x64 and ARM. Since its announcement last year, Arm64EC has been in experimental mode undergoing additional testing and bug fixes.
To finish, Arm64EC leaves experimental mode with version 17.3. This will certainly make the transition to ARM easier for developers, helping even applications that were previously blocked from moving to ARM due to x64 plugin dependencies.
With Arm64EC, you can choose to start small and build incrementally. You can identify a part of your code base that would benefit the most from native performance and rebuild it under Arm64EC. The rest of the application will remain fully functional as emulated x64, but recompiled Arm64EC parts will now have native speed.
– Windows Blog
The Windows experience on ARM is still not ideal, but Microsoft has continued to work on new tools like Visual Studio 2022, VSCode, native Arm VC++ toolchain, and more to ensure a smoother integration. Arm64 is just one more step in that direction.
