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A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

blogs.windows.com

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Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#61

Post by myaccount275 »

emilsedgh wrote: post #54
pjmlp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only on HN bubble does it matter. Apple devices are out of budget for most countries, and they only own 10% of the worldwide market share in computing. Outside desktop, Android owns the mobile market. Really, it is just US analysts going crazy with M1.

M1 can accelerate the shift of home users to Macs. Microsoft devices are already out-fashioned by apple. The Windows UX is also subpar comparing to Apple. Now the hardware is also gonna completely fall behind. If all the young people get mac's for their home computers, will the next generations use Windows at workplace? Im talking about 10-20 years landscape for Windows and Office.

I find the macOS UX to be inferior compared to Windows. This is mostly a matter of habit, and what people are used to and how they expect things to behave.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#62

Post by opsunit »

vaylian wrote: post #31
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #17

Microsoft are between a rock and a hard place. They've done a very good job maintaining compatibility with windows/DOS x86 programs as hardware and the OS grows, but eventually for windows to survive and be competitive they need to ditch it and do a successful port to the next generation (presumably ARM). This will be challenging and painful for many of their existing users.

I think that's one of the reasons why they created the .NET framework: To be able to create a new "virtual" plattform that can be ported to other environments. There is a lot of C# software out there that should run on ARM without any issues with a .NET runtime.

Mobile game development is heavily biased around Mono across Android. It is perhaps the biggest existing proving ground of the architecture independence of C#.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#63

Post by tokamak-teapot »

emilsedgh wrote: post #54
pjmlp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only on HN bubble does it matter. Apple devices are out of budget for most countries, and they only own 10% of the worldwide market share in computing. Outside desktop, Android owns the mobile market. Really, it is just US analysts going crazy with M1.

M1 can accelerate the shift of home users to Macs. Microsoft devices are already out-fashioned by apple. The Windows UX is also subpar comparing to Apple. Now the hardware is also gonna completely fall behind. If all the young people get mac's for their home computers, will the next generations use Windows at workplace? Im talking about 10-20 years landscape for Windows and Office.

I haven't noticed much acknowledgement of sole traders, as they're called in the UK. Very often when I see someone who's working for themselves they have a Macbook Air.

While they're more expensive to buy new than many Windows laptops, the general sentiment from those I've spoken to seems to be:

* It's worth the extra money for more reliable operation and fewer worries about malware.

* Buying used is much less of a lottery. They tend not to have hidden problems.

* Selling used means you actually get some return to put towards your next device.

I see people using Office and Chrome or Safari - and not much else.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#65

Post by beagle3 »

oblio wrote: post #48
beagle3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect them to have an iPad that can fill this niche for $400 when you include a keyboard. Perhaps they already do.

iPads are very limited, functionality wise. You barely have multiple windows. You can't really plug peripherals in. RAM is really limited. Etc. _______________________________________ Also, HA HA. I've checked and I was right. As far as I can see the cheapest one is $329, BUT with 32GB of storage, which is absolutely ridiculous in 2020. 128GB costs $449, and even that's barely enough storage. The keyboard is $159 (!)…

I haven't seen an $400 laptop you can upgrade the memory for. Perhaps they exist, but I've never seen one. The $250-300 chromebooks are much weaker than an iPad.

I don't know if you've noticed, but Apple did release iPhone SE2 which is an almost-flagship at medium price. An iPad with a slightly different iOS and a cheaper than $129 keyboard (there are $50 bluetooh keyboards that work with the iPad, not by apple, that are comparable to the keyboards that come with $300-$400 laptops), perhaps they'll call it "iMac SE" or "iPad SE".

The processor inside last years iPad is a slower, more limited version of the M1. Apple could, and I believe would, release a cheaper Mac-compatible machine, just like they did with the iPhone SE.

It made no sense to do so before the real Mac switched to apple silicon (Intel's offering are both expensive and inefficient for this use). Now it makes perfect sense. It make take a year or two, but it's the logical progression.

Apple are playing the very long game. Saying "you barely have multiple windows" is indication you are not looking farther than the end of 2021.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#66

Post by saagarjha »

andy_ppp wrote: post #56
kalleboo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rosetta 2 doesn't support the SIMD extensions AVX (2011) and newer, but compatibility still seems pretty good

This is because very little uses AVX instructions, hasn't it always been better to optimise software for the GPU rather than AVX instructions, even though they are not perfectly interchangeable.

I think it's more that compatible Mac software has historically compiled for non-Haswell targets in some form or the other for compatibility.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#67

Post by oblio »

rusticpenn wrote: post #59
lars-b2018 wrote: post #41

I think the bigger story here is that computing based on ARM64 has been, and continues to, surround the traditional x86-64 territory. ARM dominates phones, and is popping up in server environments as well, where it is cheaper to run for many workloads than X86-64. We have migrated to ARM based Gravitron processors to deliver our services at my company, and we have been able to reduce our AWS EC2 costs by 40% or so, w…

I do not understand why ARM is considered lesser technology. RISC was always considered to be better then CISC in many academic circles.

Well, two main reasons:

1. Innovator's dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma

ARM in this case is the underdog, attacking the incumbent x86. It is the lesser tech because it started from "below" (lower value niches not taken by the incumbent which prefers higher profit margins).

2. RISC vs CISC has never been settled. Until Apple (and Amazon super recently) produced their super recent architectures based on ARM, x86 was considered superior. Yes, RISC was theoretically better in the 80s and later 90s, but x86 has been reinvented successfully 2 times (micro-ops and x86_64) and scaled from 0.2MHz to 5Ghz. It's also a mix of CISC and RISC, it's not pure CISC now. Same for ARM, they've added various instructions which bring it closer to CISC.

As far as I can see the only real difference these days is the constant length of instructions for ARM: https://erik-engheim.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fas...

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#68

Post by saagarjha »

gsnedders wrote: post #24
mtgx wrote: post #4

Are they doing any kind of translation, too, or just pure emulation? Because if they aren't, then Windows will continue to run significantly slower on the already significantly lower-performance third-party Arm chips compared to how macOS runs on the M1. My prediction is 50%-60% of the performance of M1 on the latest/highest-end Qualcomm laptop chip.

Some of the perf gains on the M1 are due to hardware support for TSO (total store ordering), which doesn't exist on the latest/highest-end Qualcomm chip, hence the Windows support needs to insert many more barriers to emulate TSO. This likely has a significant impact on emulated performance. At least the x86 (32-bit) emulation relied entirely on JIT compiling its emulated code, instead of doing anything AOT. _However…

I believe windows elides TSO guarantees when it thinks they aren't necessary. This should usually work out all right–only a small amount of code usually cares very much about memory ordering.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#69

Post by oblio »

beagle3 wrote: post #65
oblio wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPads are very limited, functionality wise. You barely have multiple windows. You can't really plug peripherals in. RAM is really limited. Etc. _______________________________________ Also, HA HA. I've checked and I was right. As far as I can see the cheapest one is $329, BUT with 32GB of storage, which is absolutely ridiculous in 2020. 128GB costs $449, and even that's barely enough storage. The keyboard is $159 (!)…

I haven't seen an $400 laptop you can upgrade the memory for. Perhaps they exist, but I've never seen one. The $250-300 chromebooks are much weaker than an iPad. I don't know if you've noticed, but Apple did release iPhone SE2 which is an almost-flagship at medium price. An iPad with a slightly different iOS and a cheaper than $129 keyboard (there are $50 bluetooh keyboards that work with the iPad, not by apple, that…

Let's see. I know they are playing the long game, but you're grossly underestimating how big the market for cheap stuff is. Even if it's subsidized by spyware.

I doubt Apple wants to be in that market, it's a gross market (low margins, tons of support costs, etc.).

Just to give you an example, French PC site, laptop section for €400 to €600 (they also have 10 or so under €400):

https://www.fnac.com/PC-de-400-a-600-Euro/Par-prix/nsh93675/...

So about 230 (!) products in total, for a single site. In poorer countries, you can find even cheaper laptops.

Similar thing for phones, a $400 phone is not cheap. A $100-150 phone is cheap, like the Huaweis, Honors, Xiaomis, Oppos, Vivos, etc of the world (you don't even get those in the States).

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#70

Post by qalmakka »

I hope that the possibility of an industry-wide switch to ARM doesn't take away the flexibility we now have with the PC. Standardized parts and a well defined firmware interface (and thus "standard" bootloaders instead of a multitude like on ARM) is what makes the PC truly special. Moving to a world where you can't install Linux or where every single machine has incompatible firmware would be disastrous, IMHO. Current PCs can last for decades thanks to modern Windows and Linux being able to boot on old machines, without the need of special bootloaders or new firmware, just somewhat generic drivers (see AHCI, Intel HDA sound, etc)
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