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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

#71

Post by RandomOpinion »

rleigh wrote: post #59
justin66 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

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

"Microsoft will continue to provide mainstream support for Itanium-based systems until July 2013, and extended support until July 2018." -- http://www.computerworld.com/article/2516742/computer-hardwa...

Itanium came out in 2001 and the above article is from 2010, so that would be about 9 years of product releases and 17 years of support overall.

And, frankly, there's no money to be made off of supporting all those miscellaneous architectures so Microsoft has no reason to bother.

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

#72

Post by pythonaut_16 »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #68
pm90 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't apple move macbooks to ARM processors?

They introduced ARM to manage their fingerprint sensor and the TouchBar. Rumors had it that Apple is working on connecting the ARM chip to more subsystems so it can do background work like background refresh (or what that feature is called when the laptop is in sleep – PowerNap?). I see this as Apple slowly creating a hybrid (low energy ARM for easy tasks and faster x86 for speed). Maybe the goal is a complete transi…

I've been waiting for something like ever since I first got a Raspberry Pi.

Keep the x86 CPU around for active, high powered use, and then use a low power ARM CPU to run downloads and software updates while the PC is in an off or idle state.

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #68
pm90 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't apple move macbooks to ARM processors?

They introduced ARM to manage their fingerprint sensor and the TouchBar. Rumors had it that Apple is working on connecting the ARM chip to more subsystems so it can do background work like background refresh (or what that feature is called when the laptop is in sleep – PowerNap?). I see this as Apple slowly creating a hybrid (low energy ARM for easy tasks and faster x86 for speed). Maybe the goal is a complete transi…

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by digi_owl »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #69
speeder wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, Valve from the start considered SteamOS as "backup", a way to escape Windows if MS pull some shenanigan they don't like. Since MS is mostly "behaving" themselves, Valve is keeping SteamOS around, but not focusing on it. At least for now... (it wouldn't surprise me if MS became more aggressive in their W10+DX12+"Xbox everywhere"+"MS Store" push...)

The other issue for consumers is that SteamOs will give you a ~10% performance hit .

And beyond the 1337 gamer kids, who will notice?

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

#75

Post by throwaway2048 »

rbanffy wrote: post #20
mtgx wrote: post #19

Payback time? https://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-off... Okay, obviously this partnership started years back, but it's nice to see that not everyone is willing to encourage Intel's monopoly, as Google often does (in Chromebooks, too, even though Intel's chips are virtually unnecessary there). Although, to be fair, the "Wintel" name didn't come out of nowhere. Microsoft obviously played its part i…

Microsoft tried as much as it could to avoid being locked into Intel. They built Windows NT to be multi-platform and, at a given time, it ran on MIPS, PPC, Alpha and a later version on Itanium. Intel has been much more dependent on Microsoft's monopoly than the contrary.

the amount of relevant windows software that can run on ARM is a rounding error, and x86 emulation on ARM sounds completely unusable.

Microsoft is very dependant on x86.

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

#76

Post by nacs »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #69
speeder wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, Valve from the start considered SteamOS as "backup", a way to escape Windows if MS pull some shenanigan they don't like. Since MS is mostly "behaving" themselves, Valve is keeping SteamOS around, but not focusing on it. At least for now... (it wouldn't surprise me if MS became more aggressive in their W10+DX12+"Xbox everywhere"+"MS Store" push...)

The other issue for consumers is that SteamOs will give you a ~10% performance hit .

> SteamOs will give you a ~10% performance hit

Any sources to back up this claim? 10% performance hit compared to what? Windows? A different Linux distro?

I've found that for native games, Linux can actually offer better performance in many cases than the Windows version.

Someone also did a test recently (full video on Youtube) with the Windows version of the new Doom running on Linux through the WINE emulation (yes I know its not technically an emulator) via Vulkan and the performance exceeded the Windows version.

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

#77

Post by astrodust »

pm90 wrote: post #55
mtgx wrote: 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?

They'll probably take a hybrid approach before going all-in. Use the ARM CPU for low-power, now-CPU requirements to avoid draining the battery. The ARM chips in the iPhone and iPad are very good, but they're not quad-core i7 good.

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

#78

Post by gonzo »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #70
hatsunearu wrote: post #57

Why though? ARM server chips haven't beat Intel just yet.

Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc. So depending on your workload, a 96 core 1U is going to save you a lot of U's and power. No idea how Windows Server and Azure services fall into this. Maybe they want to dump specialized tasks onto ARM instead of ch…

> Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc.

True, but that 96 core 1U server is going to bear a high price, and Intel CPUs also have instructions to accelerate AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc.

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

#79

Post by edraferi »

digi_owl wrote: post #74
zitterbewegung wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other issue for consumers is that SteamOs will give you a ~10% performance hit .

And beyond the 1337 gamer kids, who will notice?

> And beyond the 1337 gamer kids, who will notice?

Isn't that the core market?

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

#80

Post by thisdepends888 »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #69
speeder wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, Valve from the start considered SteamOS as "backup", a way to escape Windows if MS pull some shenanigan they don't like. Since MS is mostly "behaving" themselves, Valve is keeping SteamOS around, but not focusing on it. At least for now... (it wouldn't surprise me if MS became more aggressive in their W10+DX12+"Xbox everywhere"+"MS Store" push...)

The other issue for consumers is that SteamOs will give you a ~10% performance hit .

This blanket statement is not generally applicable. It can depend on rendering tech used, the game, and hardware. And this is going to be an issue in bleeding edge games mostly.

Borderlands 2, for example, plays fine for me on a i7 930, with a GTX 570. An older rig.

Dota 2 with OpenGL rendering hits or exceeds the Windows FPS when run on Linux.

Switch to Vulkan though and it craters.

Source engine games with OpenGL rendering often outperform Windows.

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