Windows 8 to support ARM, System on a chip, architectures • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by brudgers » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 3:17 AM UTC

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.

Right. They have ten years of .NET penetration into the corporate world, the web, and 3rd party application developers - plus four years of .NET integration right into their operating systems.

It is running on everything from embedded systems, to phones, to desktops, to clusters. Throw in that all the hardware vendors who are interested in "the Next Windows" and Microsoft has just laid out a roadmap for the next ten years.

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

#62

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 3:29 AM UTC

joshhart wrote: post #23

rbanffy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be surprised if more than 30% of their codebase cleanly compiled for anything other than a x86...

I wouldn't. I interned in core operating systems division a few years ago. Managers cared about portability.

> Managers cared about portability.

Tell that to those who wanted to run Office and Visual Studio on their Alpha boxes...

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

#63

Post by Hacktivist » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 3:36 AM UTC

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?

When the Intel Macs were initial released there was a contest to install Windows XP on it natively (before bootcamp was even announced.) Enough people donated to the prize pool that the winner walked away with 14,000 dollars.

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

#64

Post by TeHCrAzY » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 3:46 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #46

kijinbear wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would the opposite be easier? It might make sense to offer comparability for Windows|ARM executables on Windows|x86, so if you want to hit both platforms, you'd be doing it in ARM.

I can see ARM being great for corporate desktops: .net LOB apps work, IE will work, Office will work etc.

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

#65

Post by kenjackson » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 4:25 AM UTC

contextfree wrote: post #42

dmethvin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the CES demo it appears that they've already done the port. I was really impressed they had IE9 with GPU acceleration on ARM working already too.

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

#66

Post by zmonkeyz » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 4:53 AM UTC

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.

It doesnt run that bad on my Windows Phone 7 :) We'll see how far they go with it.

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

#67

Post by rchowe » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 5:28 AM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #25

ssp wrote: post #21

There is the idea that Windows is such a terrible system that the only reason people are staying with it is that they need their legacy applications. It's not entirely without merit, but for a lot of people and businesses, Windows actually works rather well. The importance of x86 is overstated too. Many applications will be pretty close to a recompile away. There is of course the usual chicken-and-egg issue that all…

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

The risk that they're taking in consumer apps is the games market -- existing games won't work (although arm isn't that popular for gamers anyway), so it's a kind of chicken-or-egg problem as to getting games developed for that platform. I'm not quite sure how large that segment of the windows market is, but it's going to be a factor in the switch.

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

#68

Post by runjake » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 6:14 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #62

joshhart wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't. I interned in core operating systems division a few years ago. Managers cared about portability.

> Managers cared about portability. Tell that to those who wanted to run Office and Visual Studio on their Alpha boxes...

I don't get it, are you trolling? You're talking about over a decade ago, back when NT on Alpha was relevant. A lot changes in 10 years.

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

#69

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 7:46 AM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by jallmann » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 7:56 AM UTC

_b8r0 wrote: post #36

I've noticed a lot of speculation about how they will translate code between X86, X86_64 and ARM. Well, the simple answer is not to translate at all. MS have been pushing managed code via things like Silverlight and .NET for some time. My tuppence worth: Windows 8 on ARM won't support legacy x86 code, but will run .NET, Silverlight and any other managed code shamalamadingdong it needs to run. I can see Windows 8 on x…

> Windows 8 on ARM won't support legacy x86 code, but will run .NET. I can see Windows 8 on x86 supporting legacy code

Hmm, I don't believe so. That'd introduce fragmentation that Microsoft's typical users (mom and pop) should not have to deal with.

Also that'd be a pretty drastic policy shift for Microsoft seeing the pains they've gone to maintain compatibility with older software.

My guess is that, at the very least, Win8 apps running native code will be packaged into a universal binary of some sort. I find that half-hearted though, since it requires recompilation of the original software.

wtracy suggested the possibility of JITing x86 to ARM, that's ballsy and it'd be awesome if Microsoft pulls that off.