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Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra

#281

Post by layer8 »

mmis1000 wrote: post #253
layer8 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are huge amounts of existing x86 software in use, including Office add-ins, Explorer extensions, and COM dependencies in general, that won’t be recompiled to ARM. The only way ARM would take over is if compatibility with existing binaries is maintained (which is very difficult if not impossible for x86 DLLs within ARM-based applications), and if their execution remains sufficiently performant.

Microsoft takes years to develop their own version of rosetta after the fail of Windows rt. And I think you are already able to use it now, you can already run x86 on Windows on arm vm on mac(m1). Just wondering the performance when running it on the dev kit they sell now.

You can run a self-contained x86 application and self-contained ARM applications, but you can’t integrate between ARM applications and x86 in-process components (DLLs etc.), and such integration is how a lot of things work in practice on Windows. Converting an x86 application to ARM means losing those integrations, and that is a major hurdle to adoption.

Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra

#282

Post by bornfreddy »

d4mi3n wrote: post #110
DeathArrow wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It continues to suck how African countries are excluded from these product launches All South American, most Asian and most European countries are excluded. That sucks, too.

Do we have any sense of how much of this is driven by privacy regulation? Newer versions of Windows have been more aggressive about collecting user information, so this would not at all surprise me.

Given that they are launching in some of the EU countries, not much. That said, I do hope their data harvesting breaks some laws somewhere and they get fined handsomely. This trend is atrocious.

Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra

#283

Post by MikusR »

jyrkesh wrote: post #157
kcb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt this is going to feel slow in actual use. You've got 8 big arm cores with a lot of memory, fast storage, and active cooling.

Having worked with Windows on ARM in the past, I _hope_ you're right. But my experience has been that a ton of code is still going through the x86 emulation layer, which IMO is woefully lacking in performance, particularly compared to Apple's Rosetta 2 (which is a magical marvel of engineering).

Rosetta feels fast because apple m cpus are about twice as fast as qualcom ones

Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra

#284

Post by tomcam »

smoldesu wrote: post #255
tomcam wrote: post #251

Haven’t bought a Windows machine in a few years. It seems like this would likely be useful as a general purpose development machine because there is probably no crapware installed. Do you think this is a plausible argument to buy one or are they now all infested no matter what?

It might not get the longest-term support, but it seems like a half-decent deal. If you're comfortable turning it into a home server/compute module once it reaches EOL, I'd say go for it.

Yeah I like that choice to

Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra

#285

Post by tomcam »

dgellow wrote: post #266
tomcam wrote: post #251

Haven’t bought a Windows machine in a few years. It seems like this would likely be useful as a general purpose development machine because there is probably no crapware installed. Do you think this is a plausible argument to buy one or are they now all infested no matter what?

I wouldn’t recommend Windows on arm if you just want a general purpose machine, it is still very niche and will need time to be well supported. Just get a desktop with a recent Intel or AMD and reinstall the OS if you want to ensure you have something clean.

Well, a general purpose development machine. I’d like to be able to run office and a go compiler, not games

Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra

#286

Post by sedatk »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #6

I have mixed feelings about how successful this will be. The 32GB of RAM is really cool for the price - but 8cx Gen 3 is still no M1. It's still significantly slower than an 11th Gen laptop Core i5. Probably not super fun to develop on, even if serviceable - but considering nobody has cared about Windows on ARM to this point, why would you spend $599 to suddenly care about it, when WoA has far less than 1% of Windows…

On the other hand, Microsoft had spot on bets on operating systems, Internet, 64-bit, cloud, gaming consoles, managed runtimes, programming languages, high-end consumer PCs, Linux integration, and open source (albeit late).

Yes, they might have dropped the ball on more than one thing. You're especially right about Windows app ecosystem today, but it's not like Microsoft is constantly failing. They're doing phenomenal job on many fronts. They're certainly not that easy to write off.

Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra

#287

Post by 0x457 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #210
Kranar wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XBox is a great example of horrible mismanagement that cost Microsoft many billions of dollars, was almost abandoned, and went through a very rocky path to get to where it is today which is still frankly not that great of a position (it lags behind Switch and Playstation): https://www.shacknews.com/article/121384/last-one-at-the-tab... Don Mattrick almost tanked that entire product and it survives today because Phil…

>XBox is a great example of horrible mismanagement that cost Microsoft many billions of dollars Guess what, so was the first NES, and the first Play Station, the first Game Boy, etc. for their respective companies. Breaking into a new market, with a new product, in uncharted waters, with no prior experience, with no support from clueless executives who don't believe in the new product looking for any reason to stop y…

> The Xbox 360 sold 85 million units, one of the best selling consoles of all time.

Define the best? It is 10th in a list of consoles that sold at least one million units. It sold less than console release later and went through even rockier path - PlayStation 3.

Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra

#288

Post by foepys »

geodel wrote: post #238
blibble wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

presumably they want it to be able to run Teams

Yeah, Where would computer industry be if physical collaboration with open office setup and online collaboration with teams/slack does not take place?

GP was a dig at Microsoft Teams being utterly bad software that not only uses absurd amounts of memory for a chat app but also hogs all kinds of resources while still being generally laggy on high-end machines.
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