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Comment by danudey | Hacker News Reader

There is a huge amount of Windows software that's still 32-bit (or at least, installs into `Program Files (x86)`), so unless Microsoft is going to start handling that kind of emulation natively in their OS (which they may decide to do), it's going to break a huge amount of stuff.

Removing 16-bit and 32-bit OS support, on the other hand, makes perfect sense.

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It works both ways. Axing 32-bit support is going to make it impossible to use a large collection of software. On the other hand, supporting legacy architectures, legacy APIs, etc. for decades also makes developers and users lazy. There needs to be some balance.

Yes, it would have to be done at the OS level. I don't see that as a blocker.

>>so unless Microsoft is going to start handling that kind of emulation natively

They already do, and have since the x64 version of XP.

Its called WoW64.

WoW64 just handles DLL loading/memory mapping/kernel interfaces. It doesn’t do binary translation of the user code at all. Windows x86 on Windows ARM does binary translation.

from MSDN or Microsoft Learn (w/e):

"WOW64 is the x86 emulator that allows 32-bit Windows-based applications to run seamlessly on 64-bit Windows"

Sounds like emulation to me.

Thunking is not emulation.

Thunking has been widespread since OS/2 1 in the mid-1980s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32s

The original wikipedia article on Thunks has been generalized into uselessness. :-(

wow64 is just windows equivalent of linux /lib32/*

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