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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

#91

Post by bisby »

speeder wrote: post #62
vlunkr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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...)

a ton of major issues have been recently fixed. It doesn't seem to be on the back burner at all, it's just that building/updating an entire OS is a bit different from building/updating just steam. Also, a lot of fixes are edge cases that most people don't view as fixes, because it was never an issue for them.

Most of the issue revolves around GPU drivers, which in theory valve is not responsible for, but they have hired devs to work on the open source AMD drivers. Even then, most devs don't optimize for OpenGL. That's again on the dev, and not valve, unless valve is going to provide devs to every game developer out there to provide linux support. Vulkan (hopefully) would resolve that, as optimizing vulkan builds makes games run better everywhere.

Of course they aren't putting ALL their eggs in this basket. ~90% of their revenue comes from windows, so they should be putting most of their effort into windows support. You can't lose your current customers while trying to make the future better. The fact that they are in fact fixing things and hiring driver devs is a great sign. And I believe they provided the rocket league dev too?

Either way, progress is coming, slow and steady. linux as a primary gaming platform works just fine for me, thanks to valve.

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

#92

Post by rleigh »

RandomOpinion wrote: post #85
rleigh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not referring to that type of support; this is merely support for the base platform. I'm referring to the entire ecosystem of Microsoft products, of which you'll find most are x86 only. When you say "there's no money to be made...so Micosoft has no reason to bother", this attitude is a major reason why ia64 failed, and why their previous arm attempt failed, and why their current arm attempt is also likely to fail…

> I'm not referring to that type of support; this is merely support for the base platform. I'm referring to the entire ecosystem of Microsoft products, of which you'll find most are x86 only. Windows Server comes with IIS and other services that would normally have been provided in a Linux environment by the Linux ecosystem. Also, as the article notes, SQL Server and Visual Studio were supported on Itanium as well. A…

Those are just a select few products out of thousands of tools, applications and services I might need to run. The server vs desktop distinction isn't very important. What matters is the utility and hence viability of the platform as a whole. By not having the platform be generally usable, it greatly reduced its desirability and reach.

Any considerations for such a server/desktop split certainly should not apply to arm, which can be used for either. Also, contrast with the experience of ia64 on Linux, where I had the full set of tools, services, applications available. That's the sort of experience Microsoft should have provided, but didn't. And should also be doing for arm, but aren't there either.

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

#94

Post by heisenbit »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #75
rbanffy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Microsoft is still very dependent on x86. But the two main platform with potential to go forward: Server and Office are now both running on ARM.

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

#95

Post by reitanqild »

bisby wrote: post #91
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...)

a ton of major issues have been recently fixed. It doesn't seem to be on the back burner at all, it's just that building/updating an entire OS is a bit different from building/updating just steam. Also, a lot of fixes are edge cases that most people don't view as fixes, because it was never an issue for them. Most of the issue revolves around GPU drivers, which in theory valve is not responsible for, but they have hi…

linux as a primary gaming platform works just fine for me, thanks to valve.

Confirmed by a happy occasional CS:GO player here.

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

#96

Post by Twirrim »

imglorp wrote: 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…

Dell did this for ages with AMD chips. Same time every year you'd see an article go across all the magazines about Dell planning to introduce AMD chips to their servers, and just as quickly vanish once Dell had finished negotiating with Intel.

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

#97

Post by jjtheblunt »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #58
hollerith wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Is that not also true for the Snapdragon chips? (835 for example)

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

#98

Post by ChuckMcM »

I love the fact that this can even be a threat. I'm biased, as an old Sun guy and thinking the x86 architecture was a bit too adhoc[1] and way too proprietary for really clever innovation. I had pretty much given up anyone challenging them in the server space assuming that 100 years from now kids would marvel that their brain implant could be switched into 'real mode' to run something called 'dos' :-).

This is something that I give full credit to Linus and the other developers that have made Linux into a credible server operating system. Without that software base, ARM would never have been able to get where it has.

[1] I get it that most people never see the 'insides' of their systems but its always been something I cared about.

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

#99

Post by deelowe »

robert_foss wrote: post #27
shliachtx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure is one of the big three in cloud computing - Google, Amazon, and Microsoft

Sure, but it is a single cloud. Will you ever be able to buy these products? And would you ever want to? Windows Server 20XX on ARMv8 will forever remain a niche platform at best.

> Sure, but it is a single cloud.

Not sure what that means. Arguably, the cloud computing business is what's driving high performance computing at this point. Go look at the benchmarks for Ryzen, for example. It's pretty clear who AMD is targeting with that architecture (hint: games aren't in desperate need of better multi-core performance).

> Will you ever be able to buy these products? And would you ever want to? Windows Server 20XX on ARMv8 will forever remain a niche platform at best.

Did you read the article? This is about MS supporting ARM in their cloud offerings (and porting windows to do so). Whether or not consumers will purchase these solutions seems irrelevant in this context.

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

#100

Post by acdha »

ajross wrote: post #41
inyorgroove wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't most docker containers contain x86 binaries?

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…

Debian and Ubuntu have had ARM ports for years. Prospective server vendors will need to address the driver situation but once you've booted the userland is highly portable.
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