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Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

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Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#51
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are fewer binary apps these days though. Java/Scala, C#/F#, JS, Python, Erlang should all be fine.

If you need a binary, Go can be cross-compiled for ARM as well.

Pretty much any noteworthy language can be, though.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#52
post #35

This could well be a negotiating strategy to rejigger the relationship with Intel. Dell did exactly the same thing a number of times for similar reasons. So all you do is: put out some press releases, ramp up some hires, put out some glossy product roadmaps. Intel starts to get separation anxiety and flinches: well, maybe they can afford to come closer to AMD prices for another year. They kiss up and you back out of…

Ah, just like governments threaten to use Linux to rejigger MS.

I've heard similar theories about SteamOS. That it was a threat to Microsoft since they had just released their own store on Windows 8 that competed with Steam. I'm inclined to believe it since Valve seems to not care about it much anymore.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#53
post #43
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, which is sort of the point: ARM is way behind with Linux packaging and distribution. Every vendor has their little tarball of junk that runs on their SoC or device or whatever. There's no architecture-unified distro you can install on everything. And this is where it gets hurt, because while Raspberry Pi can get away with handing out tarballs, no one is going to bet a datacenter install on anything other t…

ARM and ARM64 Windows uses UEFI and ACPI, with the same OS images for everyone.

Right, I was addressing the Docker problem in the grandparent, sorry for the confusion.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#54
post #35

This could well be a negotiating strategy to rejigger the relationship with Intel. Dell did exactly the same thing a number of times for similar reasons. So all you do is: put out some press releases, ramp up some hires, put out some glossy product roadmaps. Intel starts to get separation anxiety and flinches: well, maybe they can afford to come closer to AMD prices for another year. They kiss up and you back out of…

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Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#55
post #50
post #35

This could well be a negotiating strategy to rejigger the relationship with Intel. Dell did exactly the same thing a number of times for similar reasons. So all you do is: put out some press releases, ramp up some hires, put out some glossy product roadmaps. Intel starts to get separation anxiety and flinches: well, maybe they can afford to come closer to AMD prices for another year. They kiss up and you back out of…

Not quite. They've been working together for a few years to do this. Qualcomm even based its motherboard design off of Microsoft's Project Olympus. > QDT has been working with Microsoft for several years on ARM-based server enablement and has onsite engineering at Microsoft to collaboratively optimize a version of Windows Server, for Microsoft’s internal use in its data centers, on Qualcomm Centriq 2400-based systems…

Why doesn't apple move macbooks to ARM processors?

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#56

They're not replacing Intel chips from the looks of it though, right?

No, they're going to use it in Azure where it makes cost sense, and future versions of Windows and Windows Server will run on ARM with emulation for x86 if you need it, but x86 support is definitely not going away.

> x86 support is definitely not going away.

To say the least. :)

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#58

This is awesome: with a renewed AMD and now ARM gaining another big proponent (Apple being the first imo) there might finally be some real competition to Intel's place at the top.

Samsung and Qualcomm aren't big proponents of ARM?

They're quite far behind Apple when it comes to perf. Aren't Apple's ARM chips in their iPad pro competitive with lower end modern x86_64 chips?

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#59

> We wouldn't even bring something to a conference if we didn't think this was a committed project and something that's part of our road map." As anyone who rode the rollercoaster of abandonment in the ActiveX years recalls, their previous MO was all about things that became uncommitted after being in their road map :( I really hope there's some kind of future for non-Intel players.

ActiveX deserved abandonment, but anyone who remembers those years probably also remembers that Microsoft is capable of supporting NT on many different architectures.

Potentially capable; their support for non-x86 has always fallen short.

If you look at e.g. Linux or BSD distributions, the entire world is rebuilt for every architecture. Running Linux on powerpc, arm, amd64, I get the exact same experience across the board as x86 bar platform-specific bits like openfirmware/efi tools. Microsoft has never done this. The vast majority of their stuff remains x86 only, making arm and even x64 second class citizens, with x64 only being viable as a result of the x86 compatibility. Until Microsoft start building and providing every binary as a native build, and providing the tooling for others to do the same, they will remain wedded to x86, and I'll be unable to take their support for other platforms seriously.

If a bunch of volunteers can manage to provide over 20000 software packages for over 10 architectures, totalling over 500000 binary packages, it's entirely possible for Microsoft to support three. When I used to maintain the Debian build tools, it took 18 hours to rebuild around all 18000 packages; compilers, kernel, tools, applications, everything. It would be much faster on a current system. It's all possible from a technical point of view.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#60
post #55
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. They've been working together for a few years to do this. Qualcomm even based its motherboard design off of Microsoft's Project Olympus. > QDT has been working with Microsoft for several years on ARM-based server enablement and has onsite engineering at Microsoft to collaboratively optimize a version of Windows Server, for Microsoft’s internal use in its data centers, on Qualcomm Centriq 2400-based systems…

Why doesn't apple move macbooks to ARM processors?

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