Question: Is Windows-ARM64 (ARM64 on Windows) Support Planned?

[leet4tari]

Greetings ...

I’d like to ask whether there are any plans to support Windows on ARM64 (Windows-ARM64) in the RandomX project.

With the growing availability of ARM64-based Windows devices—such as the Surface Pro X and upcoming Snapdragon X Elite laptops—there’s increasing interest in running native applications, including benchmarking and mining tools, on this platform.

A few related points of interest:
ARM64 support already exists for Linux and macOS (Apple Silicon).

Windows-ARM64 is becoming more viable as a development and testing environment.

Native support could enable performance comparisons and mining experiments without relying on x64 emulation.

Are there any technical or practical reasons why Windows-ARM64 hasn't been supported so far? And is this something that could be considered for future development?

Thank you for your time and the continued work on RandomX!

[hyc]

ARM64 support exists for Linux and macOS because they were interesting platforms to use. Personally I would never go out of my way to buy a Windows ARM64 device.

[tevador]

@leet4tari Can you provide a specific error you are getting when building RandomX for a Windows ARM64 device? I think the build should work with MinGW.

[leet4tari]

The build error is pretty verbose, but I think this is the part that seems broken

C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.hpp(45,15): error C2653: 'JitCompilerA64': is not a class or namespace name [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
    (compiling source file '../../../../../../../RandomX/src/jit_compiler_a64.cpp')
    
  C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.hpp(45,32): error C2146: syntax error: missing ')' before identifier 'InstructionGeneratorA64' [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
    (compiling source file '../../../../../../../RandomX/src/jit_compiler_a64.cpp')
    
  C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.hpp(45,32): error C2146: syntax error: missing ';' before identifier 'InstructionGeneratorA64' [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
    (compiling source file '../../../../../../../RandomX/src/jit_compiler_a64.cpp')
    
  C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.hpp(45,55): error C2059: syntax error: ')' [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
    (compiling source file '../../../../../../../RandomX/src/jit_compiler_a64.cpp')
    
  C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.hpp(45,32): error C4430: missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
    (compiling source file '../../../../../../../RandomX/src/jit_compiler_a64.cpp')
    
  C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.hpp(47,8): error C2371: 'randomx::JitCompilerA64': redefinition; different basic types [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
    (compiling source file '../../../../../../../RandomX/src/jit_compiler_a64.cpp')
        C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.hpp(45,15):
        see declaration of 'randomx::JitCompilerA64'
    
  C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.cpp(91,1): error C2825: 'randomx::JitCompilerA64': must be a class or namespace when followed by '::' [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
  C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.cpp(91,17): error C2510: 'JitCompilerA64': left of '::' must be a class/struct/union [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
  C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.cpp(91,32): error C2059: syntax error: ')' [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
  C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.cpp(92,4): error C4430: missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
  C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.cpp(92,8): error C2440: 'initializing': cannot convert from 'uint8_t *' to 'int' [C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\target\aarch64-pc-windows-msvc\debug\build\randomx-rs-71debb27b64fde9c\out\build\randomx.vcxproj]
        C:\a\randomx-rs\randomx-rs\RandomX\src\jit_compiler_a64.cpp(92,8):
        There is no context in which this conversion is possible

Might be easier to fork RandomX-rs and run Build Test Matrix CI to see the build logs.

Let me know if there is anything else that I can help with.

[tevador]

You are building with Visual Studio, that won't work. Try MinGW (clang/gcc).