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[–] 12372935? 1 point 1 point (+2|-1) ago 

It's almost going to lead to a lot of apps just dropping out of the ecosystem I would imagine unless it's seamless to recompile. Plenty of apps probably are using x86 specific instructions.

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[–] tribblepuncher ago  (edited ago)

That's uncertain. There are a number of approaches they could take, including having emulation/virtualization of older stuff for backwards compatibility. IIRC that was in the cards for a number of niche OS's that tried to switch to a non-Intel architecture over the years, in order to retain backwards compatibility to existing apps. I want to say that the version of Windows NT for the Alpha had something like that in place, and I know there were plans for it under the Itanium series from Intel, especially since their wishy-washy "benchmarks" for it did more to sink the line than sell it.