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Microsoft has extended the duration and scope of support for Windows 7 and 8.1 operating systems running on Skylake chips:
Microsoft today repudiated an early retirement date for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 support, saying that it will patch those operating systems on PCs running Intel's Skylake silicon until 2020 and 2023, respectively.
The move was a complete rollback of a January [decree] that Microsoft called a "clarification" of its support policy. Under the January plan, Microsoft would have ended most support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 on July 17, 2017, if the operating systems were powering machines equipped with Intel's now-current Skylake processor family. At the time, Microsoft attributed the decision to Windows 7's age and the hassle that Microsoft and OEMs would have to go through to ensure the 2009 operating system ran on Intel's latest architecture. In March, Microsoft retreated from the original mandate, saying then that it was extending the support drop-dead date by a year, to July 18, 2018. After that date, Microsoft said, it and its computer-making partners would not guarantee that they would revise device drivers to support Windows 7 and 8.1 on newer hardware.
[...] The one support rule that Microsoft did not reverse was its decision to support only Windows 10 on Intel's Skylake successor, an architecture dubbed "Kaby Lake;" and on AMD's next-generation "Bristol Ridge." That remained in place today.
Also at The Register and Windows.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 13 2016, @11:44PM
I would credit bureaucratic nonsense before malice or ignorance. Literally thousands of MS employees probably know how to do the tech part of this, and hundreds of them probably have personally performed older Windows installs on Skylake for themselves. Trim that number to tens who know how to navigate the procedural maze to get the update through the product release channels, and probably single digits who had it allocated as an actual project for them to work on, low priority, after all the "important stuff." Sprinkle in a little malice from marketing or other areas that don't really want the fix out there too quickly, and you have a good explanation for the current schedule.
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