Posted on Thursday, May 14 2020 @ 10:45 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Yesterday, Microsoft rolled out its Windows 10 May 2020 Update for developers. The consumer release is expected later this month but one of the interesting things here is that Microsoft is finally dropping 32-bit support. Starting with this release, Microsoft
is no longer offering OEMs the option to install a 32-bit version of Windows 10 on new PCs.
To be clear, this change does not affect existing PCs, and Microsoft says that it's still committed to offering 32-bit builds in other channels. That means that you can still buy a retail copy of Windows 10 and use it to get 32-bit media. But the writing is on the wall at this point. Eventually, 32-bit CPUs won't be supported by chip vendors anymore, and these devices will just go away at some point. With today's change, OEMs can't make new ones.
The first 64-bit x86 processors launched in 2003.
