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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

#261

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #259
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 rejected it because it had crappy UX. Those smartphones were marketed for balding dads in white shirts, working in cubicles. Steve Ballmer types. The iPhone had 60 fps smooth animations, a built-in iPod, a huge capacitive touchscreen, and most importantly none of the baggage of being associated with balding managers in their 40s. It was sexy. It was a fashion statement. There wasn’t even an AppStore on iOS…

>Those smartphones were marketed for balding dads in white shirts, working in cubicles

Ouch, burn. Though oldschool cubicles sound better than the current open office chicken farms I've seen.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#262

Post by haberman »

sharpneli wrote: post #124
oblio wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Another major difference is the memory model. In X86 other CPU’s must always see the writes of a core exactly in the right order. This limits the ability to reorder store ops significantly. ARM requires a memory barrier for this. This is a major reason why X86 emulation is so slow. One must basically issue a memory barrier after every store op. M1 actually also implements the X86 memory model too in HW. It’s only usa…

I am trying to wrap my head around whether ARM's looser memory model is a fundamental performance advantage or not.

I had always assumed that the looser memory model must have a performance benefit. But this comment from last week argues that it doesn't really buy that much, and that a bigger buffer can eliminate most of the difference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25263461

If TSO forces flushing of store buffers for every atomic access, that seems like a substantial disadvantage for x86.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#263

Post by anthk »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #256
cesarb wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and once you add a display, and peripherals you're looking at over $100 I believe the basic idea of the Raspberry Pi is that everyone already has the display (a television), so the only peripherals you need are the power supply, keyboard, mouse, and HDMI cable, which together should be around USD 15 or even less (from a quick search for local prices here then converting to USD).

>I believe the basic idea of the Raspberry Pi is that everyone already has the display (a television) Sounds like a pretty poor assumption to me. In EU at least, over half the people I know own no television(TV tax is huge here and excluding boomers, nobody watches it anyway because Netflix) and if we assume all families in developing nations own a TV in the household then it would be difficult to do any productive t…

TV tax it's just for the UK.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#264

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

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?"

My point was that openness didn't outweigh other considerations in the eyes of people purchasing them.

Windows Mobile smartphones were actually dominant in the market until the iPhone was introduced. IIRC from the industry data I had access to, there were over 100 different models in a variety of form factors from a couple dozen OEMs concurrently being sold at its peak. So it was at least ahead of all the alternatives before that point, which weakens the argument that it was "other considerations" that were the main culprit.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#265

Post by sonotmyname »

ksec wrote: post #127
cesarb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#History ), AMD's x86-64 was announced in 1999 and the full specification was released in 2000. Assuming patents last for 20 years, they should have all expired by now. For SIMD, this includes everything up to SSE2; most software which uses any of the newer SIMD extensions should have a fallback to SSE2, since older CPUs don't have these newer extensions.

AH! Thank You. The timeline make sense. Seems Apple have time this perfectly for their transition. I am now giving them some creditable excuses for the negligence of Mac in the past few years.

> Seems Apple have time this perfectly for their transition

Important to note that this doesn't really apply to Apple Silicon. Rosetta II isn't X86 emulation, it's a translation layer - big technical difference.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#266

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #261
layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market rejected it because it had crappy UX. Those smartphones were marketed for balding dads in white shirts, working in cubicles. Steve Ballmer types. The iPhone had 60 fps smooth animations, a built-in iPod, a huge capacitive touchscreen, and most importantly none of the baggage of being associated with balding managers in their 40s. It was sexy. It was a fashion statement. There wasn’t even an AppStore on iOS…

>Those smartphones were marketed for balding dads in white shirts, working in cubicles Ouch, burn. Though oldschool cubicles sound better than the current open office chicken farms I've seen.

Hehe, true! Cubicles are much better from a privacy perspective, but the startup kids tore them down on the dubious pretext of hindering collaboration. It was only a matter of time before BigCos followed suit, if only for the obvious cost saving reasons.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#267

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

anthk wrote: post #263
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I believe the basic idea of the Raspberry Pi is that everyone already has the display (a television) Sounds like a pretty poor assumption to me. In EU at least, over half the people I know own no television(TV tax is huge here and excluding boomers, nobody watches it anyway because Netflix) and if we assume all families in developing nations own a TV in the household then it would be difficult to do any productive t…

TV tax it's just for the UK.

How are you so certain it's only in the UK?

It's definitely a thing here in Germany and Austria, and a relatively expensive one at that for just possessing a TV, and I'll bet my hat it's a thing in most EU countries.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#268

Post by zelon88 »

qalmakka wrote: post #70

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. Curren…

All of those things developed out of necessity by people who either needed the functionality, or didn't want to pay someone else for it. The demand was strong for open standards because the supply for software couldn't keep pace with demand. Open source didn't really eat away at large software companies for a long time because those customers were never going to buy that product to begin with.

Now that computing has been commoditized to the point where just executing code is a commodity itself it would appear that the supply of software has outpaced the demand for software. Open-source is now eating away at somebody's lunch, and will be dealt with in a competitive nature instead of a passive one.

Buckle up.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#269

Post by cogman10 »

0xffff2 wrote: post #255
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's patent-law, not copyright law. Interestingly while the US has Fair Use (which is an open-ended legal defence), I don't think any countries in the EU (or "Western Europe" if Brexit happens) have anything beyond the closed and enumerated "Fair Dealing" defence).

>or "Western Europe" if Brexit happens Wait a second, one of us is behind the times. I thought Brexit happened earlier this year?

Brexit is in a constant state of happening and not happening. You can think of it like a qubit.

Re: A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM

#270

Post by anthk »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #267
anthk wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV tax it's just for the UK.

How are you so certain it's only in the UK? It's definitely a thing here in Germany and Austria, and a relatively expensive one at that for just possessing a TV, and I'll bet my hat it's a thing in most EU countries.

Not in Spain.
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