Why cant it run .exe?

[Amol S.]

_____The Nokia Lumia Icon which is only given out by Verizon Wireless runs on a 16bit processor. Now lets go to the PC that runs on a 64bit processor or 32 bit. The reason why a 64 bit .exe file can run on a 64bit processor computer but not a 32 bit processor computer is because it requires a 64 bit processor. Cellphone around 2000s ran on 8 bit, but now they are 16 bit, which leads to the question.
_____The thing is that around the time of Windows 98 Second Edition, many programs that were sold were sold as 16bit .exe programs that were requiring a minimum 16bit processor, and Microsoft Windows (since Windows can only run .exe ) . But now since the Nokia Lumia Icon is running on Windows Phone 8.1 ( made by Microsoft ) , and is running on a 16 bit processor as stated above in the first paragraph, why did Microsoft not add the functionality for the phone to run 16 bit .exe programs?
_____The major advantage if they did this would be that, if Microsoft makes a phone that can run a .exe file, for sure the Android and ios market would plunge towards the abyss since the phone would be considered the worlds first nano technology fully functional PC. Not only that it would be the first thing Microsoft would have done right.
_____So what I am trying to ask is why didn't Microsoft add a 16bit .exe feature?

 

[Ichinisan]

_____The Nokia Lumia Icon which is only given out by Verizon Wireless runs on a 16bit processor. Now lets go to the PC that runs on a 64bit processor or 32 bit. The reason why a 64 bit .exe file can run on a 64bit processor computer but not a 32 bit processor computer is because it requires a 64 bit processor. Cellphone around 2000s ran on 8 bit, but now they are 16 bit, which leads to the question.
_____The thing is that around the time of Windows 98 Second Edition, many programs that were sold were sold as 16bit .exe programs that were requiring a minimum 16bit processor, and Microsoft Windows (since Windows can only run .exe ) . But now since the Nokia Lumia Icon is running on Windows Phone 8.1 ( made by Microsoft ) , and is running on a 16 bit processor as stated above in the first paragraph, why did Microsoft not add the functionality for the phone to run 16 bit .exe programs?
_____The major advantage if they did this would be that, if Microsoft makes a phone that can run a .exe file, for sure the Android and ios market would plunge towards the abyss since the phone would be considered the worlds first nano technology fully functional PC. Not only that it would be the first thing Microsoft would have done right.
_____So what I am trying to ask is why didn't Microsoft add a 16bit .exe feature?

Without knowing anything about that phone, I can pretty much guarantee it's at least 32-bit. I doubt I or anyone else on this forum has ever handled a phone with an 8-bit or 16-bit CPU...not even 15 years ago.

On top of that, they're completely different CPU architectures -- regardless of word/register size or math precision. A GameCube/Wii can't run PC EXEs without outright emulating x86 instructions on a non-x86 PowerPC architecture.

A Gameboy Advance had a 32-bit processor...but you can't run Windows on it.

Our smartphones are actually fast enough to emulate a Win95/98 PC entirely, but it's extremely inefficient and wasteful to run software designed for a CISC processor on a RISC processor.

 

[Aluvus]

The CPU in the Nokia Lumia Icon is a Qualcomm Krait 400, which uses a 32-bit ARMv7 instruction set.

The limiting factor in porting code is not how many bits wide the addresses used by the CPU are (16-/32-/64-/whatever-bit), but the CPU architecture and instructions that it supports. The two issues can be related, but 64-bit x86 processors are backwards compatible with 32-bit software. The overwhelming majority of Windows software is developed, tested, and compiled for the x86 instruction set, which is wildly different from ARM. It's possible, but not trivial, to compile code for a different architecture than the one it was originally built for.

Additionally, running a Windows executable (.exe or whatever) is dependent on the Windows application programming interface (API), the set of instructions that Windows makes available to programs that run within it. This is why it is possible to (sometimes) run Windows applications on Linux under WINE, which implements parts of the Windows API. I don't think Windows Phone currently implements the complete "normal" Windows API.

 

[videogames101]

Instruction width is not the same as an instruction set. Just because two CPU's are "16-bit" doesn't mean they use the same "language" (instruction set).

 

[Ichinisan]

"Why can't Sega Genesis play SNES games?"

 

[CZroe]

Something tells me that VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, or WordStar aren't going to be quite the same killer apps in the smartphone space that they were in the 16-bit computing era anyway, so there would be zero advantage to running such applications.

 

[lamedude]

If you're a masochists DOS Box for Android/iOS exists.

 

[hdecharn]

The Nokia Lumia Icon has a 32-bit processor. (Phones have a 32- or 64-bit processor for a while.) But the ability to run .exe is not just a matter of register size; it's a matter of ISA. Microsoft Windows programs are compiled for x86 or x86-64, while most phones—like the Lumia Icon—have an ARM compliant processor. Finally, user experience would suffer: desktop programs are optimized for mouse + keyboard + big screen, not for small touch-screens.

 

[Cogman]

Biggest problem is that you are talking about 2 different uArchs. Old dos programs were written for the x86 architecture. Pretty much every phone today runs on ARM.

You could translate x86 to ARM, but that is usually translating from one to another uArch is pretty inefficient. Best example is the PS2. It requires a CPU that is easily 10x more powerful than the original PS2 was to get the same performance. Now, you can do better than that, especially in things that aren't focused on graphics but that is an example of how bad it can get. (In contrast, the x86->IA64 translation usually meant a 10->50% performance loss. Not to bad really).

 

[Aluvus]

Biggest problem is that you are talking about 2 different uArchs. Old dos programs were written for the x86 architecture. Pretty much every phone today runs on ARM.

"uarch" is generally used as an abbreviation for microarchitecture, which is not the same thing as an instruction set architecture (ISA). x86 and ARM are ISAs. A microarchitecture is the architecture of a particular implementation of an ISA. In essence, the ISA is an interface specification and the microarchitecture is a specific design for a product that complies with the ISA. Pentium 4 and Core 2 are both pretty much the same ISA, but wildly different microarchitectures.