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A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

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Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#231

Post by spijdar »

oblio wrote: post #67
rusticpenn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 archit…

I think "RISC" was, for a stretch of time, "superior", but it was always in very expensive and very niche workstations and servers.

x86 was itself a kind of underdog in that space, losing out in sheer performance and bandwidth to the high-end RISC market, but making up for it by, you know, being cheap enough that "regular people" could go and buy a family computer with an x86 processor.

Intel managed to slowly improve the various deficiencies over time, and produced a processor not only affordable, but also superior to the incumbent RISC chips in all but niche areas.

I think more than the ISA, Apple's M1 manages to be so good at its job for similar reasons to the old RISC chips -- it's built from the ground-up with a pretty specific target application, rather unlike x86, which has to be all things to all people, with legacy support and scaling from laptops to quad socket 3U servers.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#232

Post by nvrspyx »

bluedays wrote: post #211
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hope that the possibility of an industry-wide switch to ARM doesn't take away the flexibility we now have with the PC I think that ship has long sailed as we failed to treat smartphones as handheld computers and subject the smartphone/OS manufacturers to the same scrutiny as computer/OS manufacturers. This is a missed opportunity especially to those countries where smartphones are the first computer to majority of…

I see this sorta argument frequently but there was a time when only IBM was capable of making PCs. It seems whoever is first to market ends up not having an open platform, which later is superseded by a more open platform.* See the variety of open operating systems for devices. Ie sailfish, postmarketOS, librephone, etc.

> there was a time when only IBM was capable of making PCs

They may have been the only one's that could use the term "Personal Computer" for a short time, but they were not the only ones making PCs. You had Commodore, Amiga, HP, Wang, Apple, etc. Even still, IBM's PCs were not locked down and were, for the most part, based on an open architecture allowing you to freely upgrade parts. Later down the line (specifically the original IBM PC) when the technology allowed for it, you could even install other operating systems like CP/M-86, UCSD p-System, and MS-DOS.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#233

Post by HideousKojima »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #230
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hope that the possibility of an industry-wide switch to ARM doesn't take away the flexibility we now have with the PC I think that ship has long sailed as we failed to treat smartphones as handheld computers and subject the smartphone/OS manufacturers to the same scrutiny as computer/OS manufacturers. This is a missed opportunity especially to those countries where smartphones are the first computer to majority of…

We had that in the form of Windows CE based smartphones. As open as a PC, no walled garden, no app stores, just load your app and launch it. The market spoke decisively in rejecting it in favor of the iPhone and Android devices.

>The market spoke decisively in rejecting it in favor of the iPhone and Android devices.

Sure, but did the market reject it because it was a more open platform, or because of other considerations? Given that the general public is largely unaware of DRM and the like, it was likely for lack of other features. There's no inherent reason why a more open phone OS couldn't succeed in the market. After all, Android devices are generally more open than iOS devices and they've got the vast majority of the smartphone market.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#234

Post by slashdev »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #230
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hope that the possibility of an industry-wide switch to ARM doesn't take away the flexibility we now have with the PC I think that ship has long sailed as we failed to treat smartphones as handheld computers and subject the smartphone/OS manufacturers to the same scrutiny as computer/OS manufacturers. This is a missed opportunity especially to those countries where smartphones are the first computer to majority of…

We had that in the form of Windows CE based smartphones. As open as a PC, no walled garden, no app stores, just load your app and launch it. The market spoke decisively in rejecting it in favor of the iPhone and Android devices.

Can I boot Linux on an iPhone? Install android instead?

I don't think we ended up in a place much better off from a freedom perspective.

Android is a little better because parts of it are open. Google has been steadily moving things into play services though, which is not open. There is now an open source replacement for play services - I don't think it's very compatible yet though.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#235

Post by xmodem »

cromwellian wrote: post #208
xmodem wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ARM Macs are going to just be lost for any kind of gaming Every game I've tried with a Mac port runs great on the M1 under Rosetta. I've sunk many hours into Factorio and Offworld Trading Company on my M1 mini, and if I gave you the same game running side by side on an Intel mac, I'd bet you could't tell which was which without quitting and checking the system profiler. If you meant triple-A gaming, then yeah, with…

Macs in general are terrible for triple-A gaming. I doubt any Mac in existence can run a Bootcamp's version of Cyberpunk 2077, except maybe a Mac Pro with a top-end GPU, or maybe an eGPU would work, assuming you could get a top-end AMD or Nvidia eGPU. On top of that, there's a lack of raw mouse which Apple hasn't fixed despite over a decade of people begging. This really fubar's FPS games where absolute control over…

It's no Cyberpunk 2077, but I recently played through Control on medium-ish detail on the AMD GPU on my 4 year old Macbook Pro (in Bootcamp, obviously). It managed around ~50 FPS most of the time, only very occasionally dropping a little below 30 when there was a lot going on. I would try Cyberpunk 2077 on it out of curiosity but I'm not interested enough in the game to pay the launch price for it.

Obviously no hardcore gamer is going to be happy with this, but in general I'm very happy with the trade-offs Apple has chosen for portable macs and when I do replace this with an Apple Silicon machine, I will be slightly disappointed at losing the ability to play the occasional triple-A game, but not enough so to seriously consider other options.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#236

Post by karottenreibe »

offtop5 wrote: post #222
bluedays wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this sorta argument frequently but there was a time when only IBM was capable of making PCs. It seems whoever is first to market ends up not having an open platform, which later is superseded by a more open platform.* See the variety of open operating systems for devices. Ie sailfish, postmarketOS, librephone, etc.

If anything I see computers being more open now. You can buy a Raspberry pi for 30$,and run whatever you want on it. For those in lower income nations this is an absolute game changer. Phones need to sorta be closed, who wants a null pointer exception to lock the dialer UI in an emergency ? Of course if you really want to, you can buy one of those open phones and program your own dialer from scratch, not a very good…

I don't follow the argument that a closed ecosystem leads to less Nullpointer exceptions than an open one. The two seem entirely unrelated to me.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#237

Post by xmodem »

buran77 wrote: post #190
xmodem wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Untrue, Apple does permit you to replace your kernel on Apple Silicon macs. Hector Martin has a Patreon where you can sponsor and follow his work towards making Linux usable on these systems: https://www.patreon.com/marcan

That's great, let's wait and see when this actually happens and if it turns into a compelling alternative. I think Apple hit it out of the park with their ARM line so I'd love to use the hardware with an OS of my choosing, like I would historically on a standard PC.

Yeah - I'm backing the patreon and very excited for this work. I don't need it often, but when I do, being able to boot natively into Linux is tremendously useful.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#238

Post by beagle3 »

oblio wrote: post #69
beagle3 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-Eu…

I checked, they have 8 under 400euro, all of which are celerons or chromebooks -- generally much more limited than a modern iPad.

400euro to 600euro is actually $480-$720 -- which already includes your $600 "iPad + Keyboard + more" straight in its middle. A whole M1-Mac is $1000, which is 825eur, not such a huge stop from 600eur and delivers a ton more.

The iPad hardware is perfectly capable of running full MacOS, and when apple figures out the market segmentation that extracts the maximum revenue, they likely WILL introduce a cheaper Mac to take any money they are currently leaving on the table.

It makes sense to me that it will actually be marketed as an "iPad with keyboard that can run Mac apps", rather tnan a Mac, for the purposes of market segmentation and support (People expect more support from Apple for Macs than they do for iPads, and that factors into the price).

Prediction is hard, especially about the future. But Apple has proved (with iPhone SE, the new M1 Macs, and in other cases) that they are willing to attack any market segment currently held by others.

When they do it, if they do it - they'll do it by cannibalizing sales from others, not from themselves.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#239

Post by finnthehuman »

HideousKojima wrote: post #233
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had that in the form of Windows CE based smartphones. As open as a PC, no walled garden, no app stores, just load your app and launch it. The market spoke decisively in rejecting it in favor of the iPhone and Android devices.

>The market spoke decisively in rejecting it in favor of the iPhone and Android devices. Sure, but did the market reject it because it was a more open platform, or because of other considerations? Given that the general public is largely unaware of DRM and the like, it was likely for lack of other features. There's no inherent reason why a more open phone OS couldn't succeed in the market. After all, Android devices…

>Sure, but did the market reject it because it was a more open platform, or because of other considerations?

Obviously other considerations.

Where there is only a small handful of options within a class of product, any statement about "what the market wants" should be limited to very broad strokes. The consumer doesn't select from the entire possibility space, they buy from the available options.

Any "correlation is causation" statement about minor details when there are dozens of other larger distinguishing feature are the words of a lying huckster. Giving them the benefit of the doubt isn't that they're not-lying, the benefit of the doubt is that they're lying to themselves too. That's how wrong it is to make those inferences.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#240

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

offtop5 wrote: post #222
bluedays wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this sorta argument frequently but there was a time when only IBM was capable of making PCs. It seems whoever is first to market ends up not having an open platform, which later is superseded by a more open platform.* See the variety of open operating systems for devices. Ie sailfish, postmarketOS, librephone, etc.

If anything I see computers being more open now. You can buy a Raspberry pi for 30$,and run whatever you want on it. For those in lower income nations this is an absolute game changer. Phones need to sorta be closed, who wants a null pointer exception to lock the dialer UI in an emergency ? Of course if you really want to, you can buy one of those open phones and program your own dialer from scratch, not a very good…

>You can buy a Raspberry pi for 30$,and run whatever you want on it. For those in lower income nations this is an absolute game changer.

Except that decent RaspberyPI configs that could replace PCs cost around $60-70(In EU) and once you add a display, peripherals and a decent microSD card(which is still smaller, slower and less reliable than even a budget SSD) and you're looking at over $100 and for that kind of cash, a second hand X86 notebook(old beaten up Dell/Lenovo with an i5, 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD) gives you way more power and flexibility with what you can boot, install and do with it, it's not even a competition. Not to mention it comes with a built in battery so you can carry it to school unlike a PI, and before someone sniggers and shows me a link with a Raspberry PI based notebook just to contradict me, ask yourselves if you would actually use that as a productivity daily driver for work and play vs a X86 laptop.

Sorry, even in developing nations, second hand notebooks/PCs are a way better deal in every way as a personal computer than a PI which is why PIs have never taken off as PCs and are still stuck in the hacker, tinkerer, learning, embedded, automation niches.

>Phones need to sorta be closed, who wants a null pointer exception to lock the dialer UI in an emergency ?

Why do they need to be closed? Having closed source software is no guarantee of quality nor security.

>Of course if you really want to, you can buy one of those open phones and program your own dialer from scratch, not a very good idea for the typical user though

By wanting more openness we don't mean reinventing the wheel and coding open source dialers from scratch, we mean we need Apple and Google to not lock their hardware to their appstores so we(companies, users, banks, developers and even governments) don't become prisoners to their walled gardens which is basically the current situation.

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