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Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

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141–150 of 239 posts

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung and Qualcomm aren't big proponents of ARM?

They're quite far behind Apple when it comes to perf. Aren't Apple's ARM chips in their iPad pro competitive with lower end modern x86_64 chips?

The ARM server chips are not related to their mobile counterparts. Pretty much everyone is doing a custom microarchitecture, instead of growing mobile designs or building on ARM's own IP.

The 2017 chips (3rd generation) are Xeon E5 competitive.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#142
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that not also true for the Snapdragon chips? (835 for example)

No, not really. Apple's advantage is quite staggering.

And yet the Snapdragon has nothing to do with any shipped or to be shipped ARM server parts...

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#143
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ActiveX deserved abandonment, but anyone who remembers those years probably also remembers that Microsoft is capable of supporting NT on many different architectures.

Potentially capable; their support for non-x86 has always fallen short. If you look at e.g. Linux or BSD distributions, the entire world is rebuilt for every architecture. Running Linux on powerpc, arm, amd64, I get the exact same experience across the board as x86 bar platform-specific bits like openfirmware/efi tools. Microsoft has never done this. The vast majority of their stuff remains x86 only, making arm and e…

Not true. When multiarch mattered (NT 3 and 4), Microsoft was the only vendor that delivered the exact same OS, device support and development environment across x86, Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC, and pushed the industry towards standardization. Microsoft has always taken arch and platform independence seriously, and this was evident even in 2010 when I worked on NT. You could rebuild the whole system for any supported arch (x86, x64, ia64 when that mattered), now arm and arm64

It's funny, but Microsoft was spot on correct to continue supporting 32-bit x86 on par with x64. Now they can just support BTing 32 x86 on ARM64 instead of being forced to support 64-on-64, which would simply involve more overhead.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#144
post #55
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. They've been working together for a few years to do this. Qualcomm even based its motherboard design off of Microsoft's Project Olympus. > QDT has been working with Microsoft for several years on ARM-based server enablement and has onsite engineering at Microsoft to collaboratively optimize a version of Windows Server, for Microsoft’s internal use in its data centers, on Qualcomm Centriq 2400-based systems…

Why doesn't apple move macbooks to ARM processors?

two more generations, give it time

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#145
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IA64 failed because it was a bad answer to a question no one asked. AMD got it right, that's why AMD64 won.

AMD managed to produce x64 thanks to the licenses they had from Intel, otherwise this laptop would be powered by an IA64 processor.

No, it wouldn't.

Sometimes I wonder if IA-64 was just an exercise in killing of Alpha and HP-PA...

Anyway, x64 succeeded because instead of producing something no one asked for, and poorly (IA-64), AMD went to Microsoft, found out what they wanted from a 64-bit chip, and built that.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#146
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially capable; their support for non-x86 has always fallen short. If you look at e.g. Linux or BSD distributions, the entire world is rebuilt for every architecture. Running Linux on powerpc, arm, amd64, I get the exact same experience across the board as x86 bar platform-specific bits like openfirmware/efi tools. Microsoft has never done this. The vast majority of their stuff remains x86 only, making arm and e…

> Running Linux on powerpc, arm, amd64, I get the exact same experience across the board as x86 bar platform-specific bits like openfirmware/efi tools. This is demonstrably not true, there are plenty of ports that end up being Intel-only, and plenty of architectures that involve some sacrifice in terms of software choice if you want to run them. (as a SPARC and Raspberry Pi user I could elaborate, but hopefully you g…

> There are plenty of ports that end up being Intel-only .. as a SPARC and Raspberry Pi user

Sure, but you can compile failed builds of software yourself and get that tool on ARM or SPARC. ARM works pretty well on Debian, so long as your not on Raspbian & using their ancient repos with broken software. Part of why I've avoided Raspberry Pis entirely.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#147
post #100
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, which is sort of the point: ARM is way behind with Linux packaging and distribution. Every vendor has their little tarball of junk that runs on their SoC or device or whatever. There's no architecture-unified distro you can install on everything. And this is where it gets hurt, because while Raspberry Pi can get away with handing out tarballs, no one is going to bet a datacenter install on anything other t…

Debian and Ubuntu have had ARM ports for years. Prospective server vendors will need to address the driver situation but once you've booted the userland is highly portable.

Not ARM64 ports. Important difference. But yes, you can go download an ISO now and boot on any ARM64 server. Cool stuff.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#148
post #114
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian and Ubuntu have had ARM ports for years. Prospective server vendors will need to address the driver situation but once you've booted the userland is highly portable.

Fedora has too, I believe. But that's sort of missing the point. Userspace ports got done years ago because they're the easy part. The hard part is the system integration that you sweep away as a "driver situation" to be dealt with by "vendors". And so far there's no significant entry here for the ARM world. So you can't roll up a server install or Docker container that isn't, fundamentally, a hacked up tarball from…

If you were talking about the mobile 32-bit world, you would be correct.

The 64-bit world is very different. It is very homogeneous, it looks like an x64 server basically. Userspace actually wasn't ported that long ago. Fortunately now all the major Linux players fully support ARM64 servers (you can download an ISO and install on any ARM64 server without any voodoo, just like x64).

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#149
post #111

Question - is this a sign of maturity of ARM architecture? Can we really expect desktop OS to move to ARM? Could Apple start transitioning Apple AX into their laptops?

For servers - yes. And not just the 64-bit ISA, but the server specs/standards, the hardware ecosystem, OEM/ODM engagement...and software, of course! And conjecture - in the cloud it won't matter what arch you are on.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#150

AMD really needed the break. This is fantastic news. Don't all consoles also use AMD chips?

ARM, not AMD. But yep, AMD is in PS4 and Xbox One. Nintendo Switch looks like an Nvidia Tegra though (ARM).

ARM isn't used for the main CPU for the PS4 or Xbox One, both run customized APUs using x86-64, just like AMD's consumer APU offerings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_technical_specif...

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