With ARM processors increasingly becoming part of the desktop ecosystem, porting code that was written for x86_64 platforms is both necessary and a massive undertaking. For many codebases a simple recompile may be all it takes, but where this is not straightforward Microsoft’s ARM64EC (for ‘Emulator Compatible’) Application Binary Interface (ABI) provides a transition path. Unlike Apple’s ‘Fat Binaries’, this features hybrid PE executables (ARM64 eXtended, or ARM64X) that run mixed ARM64EC and x86_64 binary code on Windows 11 ARM systems. An in-depth explanation is provided by one of the authors, [Darek Mihocka].
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://hackaday.com/2024/03/28/hybrid-binaries-on-windows-for-arm-arm64ec-and-arm64x-explained/