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Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

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Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#61

Post by regularfry »

masklinn wrote: post #58
regularfry wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends what you mean by "speeds." I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago. Personally I think it's a meaningless comparison, but there you go.

> That depends what you mean by "speeds." Same as everybody else, the ratio between an amount of stuff S and the time T it takes to execute a set of operations P on it > I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago. So? > Personally I think it's a meaningless comparison, but there you go. It's not so much meaningless as irrelevant. I interpreted "ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds" to mean "ARM sp…

> > I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago.

> So?

So the idea of there being a "desktop speed" which ARM fails to satisfy is wrong. There has always been an ARM that can be used to perform "desktop"-type tasks.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#62

Post by gpjt »

maximilianburke wrote: post #23
gpjt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now, seriously, Windows failed once on RISC platforms because software vendors were not interested in supporting them. Can an ARM-based Windows desktop function when the only software it runs is Windows? I guess a lot depends on how much developers embrace .NET; .NET apps are compiled to CLR bytecode which presumably could run on ARM devices just as easily as on Intel.

> I guess a lot depends on how much developers embrace .NET; .NET apps are compiled to CLR bytecode which presumably could run on ARM devices just as easily as on Intel. The only problem I think would be with mixed assemblies, those containing both native and managed code, which can exist for PC applications. XNA games for example run on PowerPC (Xbox 360) and ARM (Zune/WP7) but their development is much more constra…

True, we've had to put porting our .NET app to Mono (for Mac/Linux support) on hold because of that -- the grid component we were using had a load of native code under the .NET layer.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#63

Post by gpjt »

barake wrote: post #19
gpjt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now, seriously, Windows failed once on RISC platforms because software vendors were not interested in supporting them. Can an ARM-based Windows desktop function when the only software it runs is Windows? I guess a lot depends on how much developers embrace .NET; .NET apps are compiled to CLR bytecode which presumably could run on ARM devices just as easily as on Intel.

The CLR is already available on ARM-based devices via Windows Phone 7 (and PPC in the 360). No idea how complete the implementation is, though.

A lot of stuff is missing; last time I looked, IronPython (Python for .NET) wouldn't run on the restricted mobile CLR due to missing support for various introspection/code compilation APIs.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#64

Post by ot »

rbanffy wrote: post #55
ot wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, on your initial post you made the assumption WP7 is runs on .NET, which is mostly incorrect. I never implied this. I just meant that the SDK is based on .NET, so .NET runs on ARM. It was a reply to the comment asking about .NET on ARM. Nothing more. And when I said "are you trolling?", I was referring to > Have you tried running Office 2010 on your phone? so I hope I wasn't downvoted for this. About the 3 poi…

> just personal considerations, You can bookmark this comment and see, in one or two years, if I was right.

Point a) didn't take that long: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2072545

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#65

Post by rbanffy »

ot wrote: post #64
rbanffy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just personal considerations, You can bookmark this comment and see, in one or two years, if I was right.

Point a) didn't take that long: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2072545

The press-release has a couple interesting parts.

http://pressroom.nvidia.com/easyir/customrel.do?easyirid=A0D...

"NVIDIA has obtained rights to develop its own high performance CPU cores based on ARM's future processor architecture"

No shipping date, no product details, nothing.

Wake me up when they have shipping silicon. In the meantime, don't let Intel release anything.

Don't get me wrong. I would love to finally get rid of the x86 ISA, but I know the first ARM PCs (actually they would not be the first ones) won't be high performance. And there is no magic - when we start seeing high performance ARM parts, they will demand more power and will have most of the problems x86s face today. Both camps have very smart people working on the processors we will be using a couple years from now. Presuming one of them has a secret weapon that will annihilate the competition is ludicrous.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#66

Post by razzmataz »

rbanffy wrote: post #51
dstein wrote: post #32

This feels awfully late given that Windows CE has supported ARM since 1996. I never understood why Microsoft was reluctant to get a full-blown XP running on ARM (minus the x86 & DOS hamstrings). Windows CE always felt like a precursor to something that Microsoft didn't have the vision to follow through with.

> I never understood why Microsoft was reluctant to get a full-blown XP running on ARM Because they tried (and failed to gain traction) before with MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha and Itanium.

NT originally ran on MIPS, before it ever ran on 386.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#67

Post by rbanffy »

razzmataz wrote: post #66
rbanffy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never understood why Microsoft was reluctant to get a full-blown XP running on ARM Because they tried (and failed to gain traction) before with MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha and Itanium.

NT originally ran on MIPS, before it ever ran on 386.

And that's why there never was an Office for MIPS...

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#68

Post by teyc »

rbanffy wrote: post #50
teyc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most CPU demanding work on a mobile phone is actually the user interface, and on WP7 this is offloaded to hardware. I see no reason why ARM tablets running Windows would be necessarily slower.

I can't imagine Windows 8 as a mobile platform.

We can all hear the collective groan when Steve Balmer said table PCs will run Windows. I don't question his devotion to Microsoft, but I seriously wished he has a bit more imagination.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#69

Post by wladimir »

rbanffy wrote: post #65
ot wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point a) didn't take that long: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2072545

The press-release has a couple interesting parts. http://pressroom.nvidia.com/easyir/customrel.do?easyirid=A0D... "NVIDIA has obtained rights to develop its own high performance CPU cores based on ARM's future processor architecture" No shipping date, no product details, nothing. Wake me up when they have shipping silicon. In the meantime, don't let Intel release anything. Don't get me wrong. I would love to finally…

They are not trying to beat Intel on their own turf. The phone/pad/netbook craze demonstrates that a lot can be done with relatively weak CPUs. The heavy lifting (if neccesary at all) can be done by the GPU. As NVIDIA their main focus is GPUs I guess that's their strategy.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#70

Post by razzmataz »

rbanffy wrote: post #67
razzmataz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NT originally ran on MIPS, before it ever ran on 386.

And that's why there never was an Office for MIPS...

Actually, the reason for Office never being ported came down to two things: different byte order and lots of x86 assembly mixed in the office code for performance reasons. Office was never 'portable'.
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