Windows was designed to run on a variety of hardware architectures, including Intel-based CISC systems as well as RISC systems. The initial release of Windows NT supported the x86 and MIPS architecture. Support for the Digital Equipment Corporation (which was bought by Compaq, who later merged with Hewlett Packard) Alpha AXP was added shortly thereafter. (Although Alpha AXP was a 64-bit processor, Windows NT ran in 32-bit mode. During the development of Windows 2000, a native 64-bit version was running on Alpha AXP, but this never was released.) Support for a fourth processor architecture, the Motorola PowerPC, was added in Windows NT 3.51. Because of changing market demands, however, support for the MIPS and PowerPC architectures was dropped before development began on Windows 2000. Later, Compaq withdrew support for the Alpha AXP architecture, resulting in Windows 2000 being supported only on the x86 architecture.
To že NT se prodává už jen pro x86 a IA-64 je důsledek nezájmu o jiné platformy, nikoliv příčina.
