LAS VEGAS—Microsoft did a rare thing today and gave a glimpse of the somewhat distant future of Windows: a world in which the venerable operating system is capable of running on almost any System on a Chip (SoC), including those from Intel, AMD and, more radically, ARM-based systems from Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Texas Instruments.

In an unusual event before Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote event, Microsoft not only talked through the importance of Windows running lean and mean on relatively low-powered and seemingly ubiquitous small form factor SoCs, but showed unnamed early builds of the next-gen Windows operating system running on Tegra 2 and Qualcomm Snapdragon-based systems. Granted, these were not what regular people would call PCs or even mobile devices. They were essentially gigantic motherboards with the SoCs at their core. Microsoft engineers and developer and partners are using systems like these to make Windows and even partner peripherals work.

During the demonstration, we saw these ARM-based "systems" running a future Windows build, running Microsoft Word, playing HD movies, and even printing using a slightly altered Epson print driver. Despite showing Word running on these systems, Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live Division, said that X86 applications do not run on the ARM architecture right now. However, he added that the company will be talking about application support at some point in the future.

Sinofsky said that users do not expect compromises simply because they're using their new SoCs. "Consumers have the right to demand everything from us as the providers of new technology for them," said Sinofsky.

When asked why Microsoft decided to go forward with ARM architecture compatibility, Sinofsky explained that it saw the customer interest and felt "this was an investment we could make in the Windows engineering process."

Sinofsky refused to call the demonstrated version of Windows "Windows 8." In fact, Microsoft is not offering any details on when the next version of Windows will ship, though Sinofsky did say "For Windows: 24 and 36 months between releases seems about right."