I'm confused: they're saying the devices have an ARM A7 chip (presumably they mean Cortex-A7) in them, which is a full 32-bit microprocessor, but they're calling them "microcontrollers"?
I would think Windows could run on a Cortex-A7, no? Perhaps the specific parts they're using have a ridiculously-low clock rate or other painful limitations?
You're right, but there is a lot of misunderstanding around this end of the market, mainly because advances have blurred the traditional segmentation. When talking about ARM, the 'M' in Cortex-M means 'microcontroller' whereas the 'A' in Cortex-A means 'application'. Cortex-A systems are often at the centre of 'System-on-Chips' and will run linux, and indeed the NT kernel as well, as they are bundled with enough RAM and fairly modern peripheral interfaces such as HDMI.
Cortex-Ms typically can't run linux (excepting uClinux) as they don't have the RAM and typically don't need to as they address a different need (dedicated function instead of general-purpose compute), and have far fewer peripheral interfaces. It used to be all about power profile, but the recent SoCs are getting pretty competitive there as well.
But as I said the traditional segmentation at this end of the spectrum is being re-cast seemingly every second week, and so terms such as 'microcontroller' are becoming less meaningful all the time. And who the hell can agree on just what 'embedded' means these days?
"And who the hell can agree on just what 'embedded' means these days?"
Or what it'll mean in 10 years, as power/radio/processor/sensor specs continue to improve. I'm speculating, but perhaps MS is banking on the low-end to grow, up into the Android/iOS space. So instead of our current 3-10 devices per family we'll have 30-100 devices. Hopefully, those devices will be secure. Maybe they'll be useful :-)
Interesting definition choice, as what constitutes an MMU has also fuzzily shifted over the years. From what I've seen, most of the SoC designs contain what in the microcontroller world of the 90s would be considered more than a minimal MMU, take for instance the classic M68451 [1], and the multi-stage bus pipelines and super-wide buses of these 'embedded' designs easily surpass such early MMUs.
I would think Windows could run on a Cortex-A7, no? Perhaps the specific parts they're using have a ridiculously-low clock rate or other painful limitations?