From InfoWorld: Microsoft's Windows chief, Terry Myerson, has posted a rambling blog, "Windows 10 embracing silicon innovation," that had little to do with Windows 10 or silicon (processor chip) innovation. Instead, for those who read far enough, it revealed that Microsoft will not provide critical updates for Windows 7 or 8.1 running on many PCs using the Intel Skylake CPU released last summer -- and already used in some new PCs. Microsoft today followed up with a list of the Skylake PCs that will get critical Windows updates.
Still, even those supported PCs will not get updates beyond July 17, 2017 -- nearly three years short of the Windows Extended support period during which critical updates are provided, which ends on January 14, 2020.
It doesn't stop with Skylake. Myerson listed other future processors for which Microsoft would not provide critical updates for Windows 7 and 8.1: Intel's Kaby Lake processor (due late this year), Qualcomm's 8996/Snapdragon 820, and AMD's Bristol Ridge processors. Nvidia was also mentioned in Myerson's post, but no specific processors were listed.
Myerson's rationale basically boils down to older versions of Windows' underlying technology being too old to support new system-on-a-chip technologies like those in Skylake, Kaby Lake, and Bristol Ridge, at least not without an investment Microsoft is unwilling to make for its old operating systems.
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