Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE • Hacker News Board

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#121

Post by microtonal » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:23 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #22

kevin_b_er wrote: post #11

> With a Snapdragon inside your PC, you'll no longer need Wi-Fi to fetch your latest e-mail and catch up on Twitter. Instead, you'll be able to get online wherever there's cellular connectivity. I'm not buying the optimism, especially not in the US. The cellular data is still horribly limited. In Canada it is even worse. The "unlimited" plan is surging back, but it has automatic throttling at varying points. Oh and s…

To MS's credit, Win10 does have a metered connection mode that tries to save data. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/instantanswers/633571e5-... Not sure how this is worse than what Android or iPhone do. My apps are constantly chatting on the internet and I have zero visibility over it and any attempt to control it involves a lot of behind the scenes controls not obvious to the end user.

Not sure how this is worse than what Android or iPhone do. My apps are constantly chatting on the internet

I thought that what iOS apps can do in the background is fairly limited:

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/iP...

E.g., Dropbox can only synchronize the camera roll when you keep the app open or enable the location updates permission. Also, on iOS, you can disable cellular data for specific applications.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#122

Post by MichaelGG » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:26 PM UTC

problems wrote: post #118

MichaelGG wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory model and byte order is enough to add breakage to stuff written in all of those languages.

I believe Java and C# enforce specific byte orders to get around this issue, so I doubt you'll see a problem there unless interacting with C++ libraries.

Not if you're converting bytes into integers, for instance. E.g. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.bitconverter... - it's arch specific.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#123

Post by dmitrygr » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:32 PM UTC

hermitdev wrote: post #120

dmitrygr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ignores that setting for updates, telemetry, etc

No it doesn't. Automatic updates will not occur over metered connections. Manually initiated, sure. Unsure about telemetry.

source: seen it happen with my own two eyes

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#124

Post by antihero » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

Fantasic, except in the centre of one of the most tech cities in the world, London, I can still barely scrape 200Kb/s with Three outside Liverpool Street.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#125

Post by kevin_b_er » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

leggomylibro wrote: post #33

wyldfire wrote: post #26

I look forward to learning more about this product. I love that we're moving non-x86 into mainstream consumer products like this (and not limited to low-end chromebooks, e.g.). ARM SoCs lack the backward compatible x86 BIOS-style bootstrap. This is great because it's kinda crazy to think about booting into stuff like MBR, real mode, etc in 2017. But this is bad because without good standards it's really tricky to hav…

Yeah, that's my biggest fear for this computer. I would snap up two or three in a heartbeat if I could put my favorite Linux distro on it. My little 10" ARM chromebook has already left my more powerful laptop gathering dust. It seems like 'just a browser' at first glance, but it becomes so much more when you add a chroot which can launch X sessions into Chrome tabs. These Microsoft ARM machines are encouraging, since…

"Disabling Secure Boot must not be possible on ARM systems."

#20 in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/com...

Digital restrictions management lockdowns prevent installing Linux.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#126

Post by maga » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:39 PM UTC

bhauer wrote: post #57

If you are part of the cult-like group that dreams of a future Surface Phone, which includes myself, this is an interesting milestone. If such a device has been in the works in the past, Intel's cancellation of Morganfield (Broxton SoC for phones) was a huge set-back. Microsoft pursuing x86 emulation on ARM, while certainly of interest to low-cost traditional form-factors such as laptops and tablets, is also interest…

I was very enthusiastic about both Microsoft Phone and Ubuntu Phone, I still am. I'd love to replace all my devices with a single below 7-8" phone that could run x86 apps at the performance level of Macbook Air 2013. Since most of my dev work goes on in Intellij IDEs and I use cloud for more demanding machine learning tasks, I don't really need much performance from the workstation to merit having a dedicated notebook/pc for it.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#127

Post by lloeki » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

DCKing wrote: post #30

pawadu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would hardware emulation even work? Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta_Crusoe In fact, most high-performance CPUs be it ARM or AMD or Intel do instruction translation internally.

Nvidia makes an architecture (Denver [1]) that is made by former Transmeta people and is in many ways a direct successor to this chip. In its current forms, Denver is implemented to execute ARMv8 instructions, but it could in theory execute x86 just the same. Now it's performing its internal exotic VLIW instructions by performing ARM "hardware emulation", but it could do x86 "hardware emulation" just the same. Qualco…

This is way over my head, but IIUC practically this would be both an arm CPU and an x86 CPU at the same time? Can it switch "on the fly" in a practical manner, and if so what kind of context switch are we talking about? Would it be viable to multitask between the two archs?

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#128

Post by suihkulokki » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:47 PM UTC

ryukafalz wrote: post #107

wyldfire wrote: post #26

I look forward to learning more about this product. I love that we're moving non-x86 into mainstream consumer products like this (and not limited to low-end chromebooks, e.g.). ARM SoCs lack the backward compatible x86 BIOS-style bootstrap. This is great because it's kinda crazy to think about booting into stuff like MBR, real mode, etc in 2017. But this is bad because without good standards it's really tricky to hav…

>Awful: often used to protect subsidies or other business model hijinks; can't install an alternate OS. And there's the rub. Microsoft forbids manufacturers of ARM-based Windows devices from allowing customers to disable or customize secure boot.[0] I doubt they'll change that going forward. >On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. Only Standard Mode may be enabled. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-…

Shim is signed with microsoft key, does it still require custom mode for booting?

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#129

Post by lloeki » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

emilecantin wrote: post #55

> Gigabit LTE Wow, now I can bust my monthly data allotment in just a second! (or ~6s if you get the "big" data plan)

There are set-top boxes, from ISPs that are also mobile operators, which embed femtocells. When a mobile subscriber is using such a femtocell, it doesn't count towards the mobile data cap.

Re: Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs with Gigabit LTE

#130

Post by JustSomeNobody » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 6:53 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #121

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To MS's credit, Win10 does have a metered connection mode that tries to save data. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/instantanswers/633571e5-... Not sure how this is worse than what Android or iPhone do. My apps are constantly chatting on the internet and I have zero visibility over it and any attempt to control it involves a lot of behind the scenes controls not obvious to the end user.

Not sure how this is worse than what Android or iPhone do. My apps are constantly chatting on the internet I thought that what iOS apps can do in the background is fairly limited: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/iP... E.g., Dropbox can only synchronize the camera roll when you keep the app open or enable the location updates permission. Also, on iOS, you can disable cellular data for specifi…

This is exactly why you can't get a decent photo uploader on iOS to upload in the background. The existing ones either stop after a few because iOS puts it to sleep (or whatever the term is) or they have to use location services to stay awake longer, but that's a gross hack.

I get why Apple does this. I just wish they would let me choose to have an app run as a service. Being able to sync all my photos to NextCloud while running in the background (and not divulging my location) would be great.