Microsoft announced today at CES 2011 that the next iteration of its desktop OS, Windows 8, will be supporting System on a Chip (SoC) architectures.

The announcement, which comes before the Microsoft keynote at CES later today, means that Windows 8 will have the ability to run on architectures that only Windows Embedded had been able to run on before. This includes ARM based architecture, which Microsoft runs Windows Phone 7 on right now.