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Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures

microsoft.com

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Re: Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures

#41

Post by te_chris »

redthrowaway wrote: post #32
maguay wrote: post #20

So how long will it take hackers to get Windows 8 running on an iPad? Will definitely be interesting...

Why? Putting Android on the iPhone I get, but I don't see too many hackers out there wanting to flip off Apple by installing Windows , of all things. To put it another way, how many macbook pros are running Win7 solo, aka w/o bootcamp or VMware?

Flip off apple? Really? Apple sell them a device, they own it and do what they like with it. I don't think achieving something non-trivial like getting windows 8 running on an ipad is flipping off apple.

Re: Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures

#42

Post by contextfree »

dmethvin wrote: post #39
kenjackson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enterprise LOB is almost all .NET and web now. Native apps are increasingly just consumer apps.

If Microsoft ported Office/SharePoint to native ARM I might be able to believe this.

They are porting Office to native ARM, it was mentioned in Sinofsky's presentation.

Re: Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures

#44

Post by contextfree »

runjake wrote: post #37
wtracy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS has learned from their experience with Windows on Alpha. Even when they released XP for x86-64, they initially wouldn't sell it at retail for fear that people would get confused and buy the wrong one. I'm betting they have some compatibility magic cooked up that we haven't seen yet. Emulation has already been suggested. How about the possibility of having a launch hook that recompiles x86 machine code to ARM machi…

Their "magic" is .NET and MSIL.They explicitly stated they aren't virtualizing or emulating x86 code during the session.

The real magic is probably the Windows app store and new app packaging format that are also expected to be introduced with Windows 8. I'd imagine apps will be required to support both ARM and x86.

Re: Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures

#45

Post by rbanffy »

kenjackson wrote: post #31
jawee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried running Office with a little network latency? The 10x slowdown is barely usable and unavoidably annoying, especially if you're used to a faster computer.

Probably 50% of the time I use office it is over remote desktop over VPN, and honestly I don't really notice it (I really don't notice it for any application except streaming media over RDP isn't great, but surprisingly acceptable). Maybe we just have really fast networks.

With Remote Desktop you are running Office on the machine that has a fast network and only transferring the pixels that change. That's not, probably, what jawee was saying.

Re: Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures

#46

Post by rbanffy »

kijinbear wrote: post #27
bonzoesc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a crazy thing to say. The UI, the APIs, etc. will all be based on Windows 7, and any all-CLR apps should run without change. On Windows 8 running on x86, current apps (and Windows 3.1 apps, and maybe DOS apps?) will undoubtedly still run. It's just like the Mac Intel transition, but without an emulator to fill in the gaps.

Who knows? MS might be obsessed enough with backwards compatibility to pack an emulator in there, like they did with WOW64 (though it would be more difficult to write an x86 emulator for ARM).

> it would be more difficult to write an x86 emulator for ARM

Building an x86 emulator is easy. Building one that can run Windows 8 software at speeds comparable to then current Intel or AMD x86 processors will probably be impossible. There is no such performance gap between ARM and x86.

Re: Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures

#47

Post by jdabney »

brianwillis wrote: post #43

Can one of you clever people explain what is meant by the term "system on a chip"? Is it just a marketing buzzword, or is there more to it than that? I've tried wikipedia, but just got even more confused.

A system on a chip is a single chip that integrates all or almost all other chips on a motherboard into one chip. So this chip will have a cpu, graphics, memory controller, network controller, io such as usb. That way you can have basically one chip that is all or most of the computer. Sometime RAM and normally storage is separate chips but you basically end up with just a few chips on a very small, normally low power motherboard. It is great for system integrators as they don't need to spend as much development time to build new machines.

Re: Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures

#48

Post by kenjackson »

rbanffy wrote: post #45
kenjackson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably 50% of the time I use office it is over remote desktop over VPN, and honestly I don't really notice it (I really don't notice it for any application except streaming media over RDP isn't great, but surprisingly acceptable). Maybe we just have really fast networks.

With Remote Desktop you are running Office on the machine that has a fast network and only transferring the pixels that change. That's not, probably, what jawee was saying.

But I use Office completely w/o a network connection quite often. It's not a web app. It rarely touches the network. Just about the only time I hit the network is when using Excel to access a relational store or if your document is on a file share (and even then the document is stored locally after opening it).

I assumed he meant something where the network latency would impose a keystroke-level degredation in performance.

Re: Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures

#49

Post by maximilianburke »

I wonder how much effort will be required to port native applications to Windows/ARM. I imagine it won't be too onerous since both x86/x64 and ARM are little-endian. Excepting bits of inline assembly and use of compiler intrinsics I don't think it would be too difficult. I also wonder if there will be a FAT binary extension to PE/COFF, or if applications will have to have separate builds per platform.

Re: Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures

#50

Post by rbanffy »

kenjackson wrote: post #18
rbanffy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average CPU utilization is misleading. Just wait to see how long those small brief moments when you have 50% CPU utilization will extend into minutes under emulation. And, BTW, nobody would buy a computer that can run only Windows and Office. To be fair, only the Office part would have to run under emulation. As soon as the code calls into core Windows, the machine would be running ARM code. I don't know where the bo…

That's why I also noted the peak CPU utilization (4%). I do agree that only running Windows and Office is not sufficient. But its a starting point for the discussion.

I would have to measure it again, but I remember seeing numbers much higher than 4% peak when I had to use Office. It could be some other latency disguising as CPU usage. The fact is it's been a while since I last used Windows and Office 2010 and I would prefer it to remain that way.

Also, consider that A-15 may be competitive with current x86 designs. Who knows what will Intel and AMD bring by the time A-15/Denver machines hits the shelves.

That said, I find my modest Atom good enough for Django programming the slightly less modest Core i5 very reasonable with Java and Eclipse. It will take some iterations until ARM catches up (I assume it will move faster than x86 because of its simple architecture). I have no doubt a relatively modest ARM machine will be good enough for most of my then current usage.

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