Microsoft has a version of Windows (and even Visual Studio Pro) that runs on aarch64, specifically for Qualcomm SOCs, so it wouldn't be completely outside of possible. But I suspect they won't do it because they're probably be more interested in pushing Windows on ARM enthusiasts to Microsoft's and their partners' own hardware.
From what I've heard, Microsoft and Qualcomm signed an exclusive deal for Windows on ARM for a number of years. Microsoft could theoretically release a Windows version for the M1 but they'd be breaking their contract with Qualcomm which can only go down badly.
However, in a few years' time the deal runs out and it might be possible again, unless they can think of a reason to renew the deal (i.e. inclusion of Qualcomm's optimised x86/amd64 translation layer).
This is a huge overstatement. A few engineers went to Qualcomm, not the "Apple M1 team." Market forces at work. However, I do suspect they will help Qualcomm come closer to being competitive. How close they will get in performance remains to be seen. The M2 is already about 20% faster with the same number of cores.
> Nuvia was founded back in 2019 by former Apple silicon executive Gerard Williams III, along with Manu Gulati and John Bruno. Williams was the chief architect behind several major Apple CPUs and chipsets from 2010 to 2019 .. the Cyclone, Typhoon, Twister, Hurricane, Monsoon, Vortex, Lightning and Firestorm CPUs. These CPUs were featured in the Apple A7, A8, A9, A10, A11, A12 series, A13, and A14 respectively. The Nuvia founder’s profile also notes that he was the chief architect for Apple’s Mac hardware ... Going back even futher, the Nuvia co-founder worked at Arm from 1998 to 2010, working on CPU tech like the Arm Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A15 CPU cores.
> Qualcomm paid $1.4 billion for Nuvia, they must have hired more engineers and/or invented new IP.
This assumes that valuation is rational. It is not, and recent history is full of companies over-paying or under-paying for their acquisitions. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, and the pudding will still take a while to get ready.
M1 is a fixed target, everyone will get there eventually. For example, AFAIK Intel has plans to have something competitive with the M1 in terms of performance per watt at some point in 2023. The question is whether Qualcomm will be able to get where Apple will be at that time, because nobody will care about “M1-equivalent” in 2 years.
And yeah, Nuvia is more “a handful of engineers” (though quite good at their job) than “the former Apple M1 team”. It took Apple billions upon billions and the better part of a decade. These things are very long term plans, and at this scale it depends at least as much on high-level strategies than on engineering.
Windows 11 for ARM apparently runs nicely in a VM on ARM Macs, a coworker of mine is using it for small projects. Including x86 emultion - his project requires some x86 tools.
