Can ARM64-based tablets (like the Surface Pro) run built executables in 2024?

[BertMcMahan]

The Surface Pro 11 (the latest one) only offers ARM processors*. I can't tell what the compatibilities are with LabVIEW. I've searched, but haven't come up with much recent information. Most discussions about ARM processors are about Raspberry Pi's, and other discussions are about the LabVIEW IDE itself. It seems that the landscape changes very quickly for this, and all of the info that I found might be out of date by now.

I understand that the Surface Pro's do have an x86 emulation capability, and that "most" applications can run. Has anyone tried to run many LabVIEW exe's on a Windows 11 Surface Pro? I'd guess drivers (like DAQmx) won't work, but I would guess there's a chance for .exe's that don't interact with external drivers.

*There are rumors an Intel version could come out at some point, and the "For Business" series may be a little different, but at the time of this writing the 11 is ARM only.

[rolfk]

Maybe the latest Surface Pro OS has improved on that but they did not support SSE and SSE2 instruction sets properly and you can’t disable the generation of SSE in the build settings since LabVIEW 2017.

[BertMcMahan]

Any additional reading you could suggest? It appears that Windows 11 itself requires SSE2 support, but you said "properly" so I'm sure there are gotchas.

[rolfk]

Windows 11 on your Surface Pro is of course the OS for your device and because of that is compiled to run natively on it. If it wasn’t, in which OS context would it run? There needs to be a native OS on that device, otherwise it would pull a Münchausen! 😁

It also is not like your desktop Windows in other ways. It does not contain a native Win32 binary API at all but only a Universal App interface. That’s basically a completely .Net based interface to all Windows services and only lets you install Universal apps that are compiled as such (meaning they need to be compiled as .Net apps in a .Net capable compiler) and you only can install them from the Microsoft marketplace without some developer hacks.

For backwards compatibility it also contains a Win32 subsystem that emulates an Intel x86 system but that emulator has limitations as pretty much every emulator has.

[nibuddy1777]

My company just bought some of the ARM64 Surface Pros and wanted to know if the LabVIEW RAD software (we use this executable). Of course the Installer failed. I attempted to install LabVIEW 2020 Development Environment to see if I could build it (had no idea if this would work). The installer did finish (with a few cryptic "Could not open Top Level VI " messages during the installation process (probably some kind of LV built exe to run install scripts).  After it finished the Surface Pro continually reboots to a bluescreen. 

[rolfk]

It’s definitely not officially supported by NI nor tested for that. And AFAIK the situation is still the same: it can’t technically work. LabVIEW is a to complex snd demanding environment for the x86 emulator on the Surface Pro Windows OS.

[LVNinja]

what if ARM Surface runs a VM Oracle Virtual Box running windows ? Would that LV under windows be able to generate executables that would work ? 

[rolfk]

Maybe. But the proof lies in the pudding! 😁

And no, I'm not going to buy a Surface Pro just to proof that. 😀