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Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

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Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#51

Post by rbanffy »

dstein wrote: post #32

This feels awfully late given that Windows CE has supported ARM since 1996. I never understood why Microsoft was reluctant to get a full-blown XP running on ARM (minus the x86 & DOS hamstrings). Windows CE always felt like a precursor to something that Microsoft didn't have the vision to follow through with.

> I never understood why Microsoft was reluctant to get a full-blown XP running on ARM

Because they tried (and failed to gain traction) before with MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha and Itanium.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#52

Post by wazoox »

bbgm wrote: post #41
erik wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that DEC (Compaq?) shipped very capable JIT recompilation of x86 to Alpha a long time ago. They were trying to get past the hurdle of Intel's lock in. It didn't work.

And SGI tried something similar on their MIPS processors. That didn't work either

Actually they shipped some of their workstations with softwindows 95 (which in the meanwhile, became Virtual PC, then was bought by Microsoft). It was close to usable on really fast machines :)

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#53

Post by wazoox »

erik wrote: post #38
6ren wrote: post #28

The problem Microsoft faces is that the primary selling point of Windows is the third-party software... which won't run on ARM. Solutions: all providers recompile for ARM (unmanageable). W8 emulates x86 (slow). W8 does very tricky JIT recompilation of x86 to ARM, as if it were a VM (amazing). Launching .Net a few years back means that at least all software written for that is trivially retargeted. A clever (or serend…

I believe that DEC (Compaq?) shipped very capable JIT recompilation of x86 to Alpha a long time ago. They were trying to get past the hurdle of Intel's lock in. It didn't work.

Called FX!32, It was very similar with Rosetta, which came with the Intel Macs. It was viable because the Alpha at the time were really much faster than the Pentiums. On the other hand, low power ARM processors certainly won't be any faster than the competing intels, so that would make an emulation really dog slow.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#54

Post by ot »

rbanffy wrote: post #45
ot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trolling or what? All your posts seem to be based on the assumptions that a) The ARM architecture is intrinsically slower than x86 b) .NET is intrinsically slow c) Microsoft wants the same applications that run on the desktop to run on the mobile Any evidence that backs these assumptions?

> a) The ARM architecture is intrinsically slower than x86 Current ARM processors are not designed for speed. I doubt they will be able to outrun x86s in single-thread performance anytime soon. Without faster threads, the machine doesn't feel fast. OTOH, more cores make a machine feel smoother under load, which is very nice. > b) .NET is intrinsically slow This is the Java vs. native discussion. JIT and optimization…

> Also, on your initial post you made the assumption WP7 is runs on .NET, which is mostly incorrect.

I never implied this. I just meant that the SDK is based on .NET, so .NET runs on ARM. It was a reply to the comment asking about .NET on ARM. Nothing more.

And when I said "are you trolling?", I was referring to

> Have you tried running Office 2010 on your phone?

so I hope I wasn't downvoted for this.

About the 3 points, "I doubt ...", "I don't see" and "people will want" is no evidence, just personal considerations, and mostly on the short term. So I don't want to continue the discussion any further.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#55

Post by rbanffy »

ot wrote: post #54
rbanffy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a) The ARM architecture is intrinsically slower than x86 Current ARM processors are not designed for speed. I doubt they will be able to outrun x86s in single-thread performance anytime soon. Without faster threads, the machine doesn't feel fast. OTOH, more cores make a machine feel smoother under load, which is very nice. > b) .NET is intrinsically slow This is the Java vs. native discussion. JIT and optimization…

> Also, on your initial post you made the assumption WP7 is runs on .NET, which is mostly incorrect. I never implied this. I just meant that the SDK is based on .NET, so .NET runs on ARM. It was a reply to the comment asking about .NET on ARM. Nothing more. And when I said "are you trolling?", I was referring to > Have you tried running Office 2010 on your phone? so I hope I wasn't downvoted for this. About the 3 poi…

> just personal considerations,

You can bookmark this comment and see, in one or two years, if I was right.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#56

Post by xpaulbettsx »

wtallis wrote: post #39
steveb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may run on Itanium, but it doesn't support more than a fraction of the x86 server functionality. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772344(WS.10).a... I don't see how Microsoft will ever shed the x86 legacy in Windows. Intel would have an interest in killing off arm-based laptops with aggressive pricing, and there really isn't any history of Windows developers rebuilding apps to support other chip archit…

Wow, that's a sad list. It looks like they didn't even port half of the server components to the Itanium, and they warn you not to use .NET for anything performance-sensitive. The closest thing they've got to a modern, portable environment and their first port of it is so embarrassingly slow that they have to warn you on the feature list. Even worse, their modern GUI APIs (WPF) weren't ported at all, so even simple .…

There's no reason all of that stuff couldn't run on Itanium too, but it's a matter of choosing what to invest in; OS releases have a huge test cost with supporting anything, and Itanium is too small a market - ARM is different because it's clearly consumer-based and it's here to stay. I assure you, it is all portable.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#57

Post by regularfry »

masklinn wrote: post #47
yason wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've probably seen that: - ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds; further, there are dual-core and quad-core ARM chips in the near future - Laptops have been fast enough for years that customers can trade off some speed in favor of much longer battery life - They see synergetic advances in gluing together mainline Windows and Windows Phone with ARM platforms: ARM is certainly going to be a player, they're certain…

> ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds Frequencies, not speeds.

That depends what you mean by "speeds." I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago. Personally I think it's a meaningless comparison, but there you go.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#58

Post by masklinn »

regularfry wrote: post #57
masklinn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds Frequencies, not speeds.

That depends what you mean by "speeds." I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago. Personally I think it's a meaningless comparison, but there you go.

> That depends what you mean by "speeds."

Same as everybody else, the ratio between an amount of stuff S and the time T it takes to execute a set of operations P on it

> I used an ARM3-based desktop machine for a while 15 years ago.

So?

> Personally I think it's a meaningless comparison, but there you go.

It's not so much meaningless as irrelevant. I interpreted "ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds" to mean "ARM speeds are soon at [processing] speeds corresponding to x86 desktop machines at equivalent prices" which definitely isn't the case, not by a long shot. Soon at desktop frequencies yes (the A15 is advertised at up to 2.5GHz while retail desktop CPUs have been stuck under the 4GHz barrier for more than 5 years), performance per watt definitely (ARM has blown x86 away forever there) but actual, raw computational speed not really.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#59

Post by masklinn »

kenjackson wrote: post #27
rbanffy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows failed on RISC because when x86 proved too competitive I remember distinctly how much faster Alpha-based workstations were in comparison to its Pentium Pro cousins. Unfortunately, I couldn't run many programs I had to (Office, for instance, ran under emulation, at Pentium-like speeds). I could run SQL Server and pretty much that was it. And notepad. And Minesweeper. I can imagine a niche for high-density AR…

But there is the Cortex A-15 which puts ARM in the Intel perf ballgame. Not surprisingly, I've heard grumblings for nearly the past decade of an ARM version of Windows in various states of stability. It will be interesting to see how far along this is. The issue with x86 and clocks had little do with Windows, and more with the Blue Crystal effect (MHz sell CPUs not perf). There's a great insider book about this calle…

> But there is the Cortex A-15 which puts ARM in the Intel perf ballgame

Where "Intel perf ballgame" might mean "within an order of magnitude of Intel's currently shipping ULC chips". A9-based hardware has barely started shipping (as in, hours ago), by the time A15s ship Ivy Bridge will be out. If not Haswell.

Re: Windows 8 to introduce ARM; First Public Demonstration Expected This Week

#60

Post by yason »

masklinn wrote: post #47
yason wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've probably seen that: - ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds; further, there are dual-core and quad-core ARM chips in the near future - Laptops have been fast enough for years that customers can trade off some speed in favor of much longer battery life - They see synergetic advances in gluing together mainline Windows and Windows Phone with ARM platforms: ARM is certainly going to be a player, they're certain…

> ARM chiops are soon at desktop speeds Frequencies, not speeds.

More accurate claim: with "desktop speeds" I meant the processing power required to run a basic 2010's desktop system, including a modern browser and watching videos. ARM is pretty close there already and conversely nearly any x86 laptop today is vastly overpowered for any of those tasks.

The power that is supplied by modern desktop machines and used by heavy gamers, video editing guys, and number-crunchers is a whole another story. That market is probably settled for desktop for quite a long time.

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