Microsoft is working to bring 64-bit Intel app emulation to Windows on ARM

https://www.neowin.net/news/exclusive-microsoft-is-working-to-bring-64-bit-intel-app-emulation-to-windows-on-arm

by tosh • 7 years ago

56 56 7 years ago

neowin.net

schitzapplebits• 7 years ago

How can the hardware possibly support that in a usable way?

kyberias• 7 years ago

I think it's purely software translation from x64 -> ARM.

icebraining• 7 years ago

I think the question is whether the performance will be reasonable. Most emulators (e.g. of gaming consoles) struggle to keep up with recent software, since the translation often incurs in a lot of overhead.

tyingq• 7 years ago

I assume it's targeted at consumers. Many of them are happy right now with Windows on old Core 2 Duo, Celeron, etc, machines. Assuming a sufficiently fast ARM processor, they may not notice the slowness the same way you would.

anilgulecha• 7 years ago

Intel has put out a legal fix statement last time around. Similar announcement this time?

Looks like bringing ARM power efficiency and crazy parallelism to windows is only a good thing for consumers.

stefan_• 7 years ago

Intel doesn't own x86-64, more commonly known as AMD64.

phonon2• 7 years ago

You're forgetting about Intel's SSE2.... (which was incorporated into AMD64).

xoa• 7 years ago

Intel has put out a legal fix statement last time around. Similar announcement this time?

AMD64 was announced in 1999 and the spec was out in 2000, with the first implementations in 2003ish IIRC, and Intel releasing its implementations starting 2006 somewhere. While there have been more extensions and new features since then, most of the really key ones from the basic perspective of requirements to run software were early. Which means we're at or rapidly approaching the big deal day when all possible patents expire on all core parts of the ISA. It'll definitely be very interesting to see what happens at that point. As well as Microsoft, it may be something Apple has been waiting for as well. Moving to their own chips for Macs would be a lot easier if they can just flat out implement x86-64 (or at least enough of it) however they want for a transition period or even permanently.

threatripper2• 7 years ago

What is the x64 architecture?

What is the difference between x64 and AMD64?

Why is it called "64-bit Intel app" in the headline?

neogodless2• 7 years ago

It's actually the x86-64 instruction set, that is to say, the 64-bit version of x86. AMD created the first implementation of this set with AMD64, and Intel then adopted it with their own flavor as Intel 64. I don't think the headline is as accurate as it could be. Probably wrote the headline with the assumption that "most readers" would better understand "64-bit Intel" than "x86-64" but they might be underestimating their readers! And even then, it's officially called "Intel 64" according to Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Intel_64

diffeomorphism• 7 years ago

x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64 and Intel 64)

One official name among others. Linux distros tend to refer to it as amd64.

tw04• 7 years ago

AMD invented 64-bit extensions back when Microsoft was busy trying to differentiate between their "big metal" Itanium chips and consumer processors. Turns out everyone wanted more memory and didn't want to have to rewrite all of their apps to get it.

Intel then had to license it, but because it's Intel they refused to call it AMD64. So the industry as a whole just started saying x86-64 to mean both AMD64 and Intel 64 so that the general consumer wouldn't think that insert app wasn't compatible with both.

neogodless2• 7 years ago

Someone with a better understanding of CPU architectures and instruction sets may be able to correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Microsoft is working on bringing x86-64 emulation to Windows 10 on ARM? No doubt the headline is written to be a bit more consumer-friendly.

AMD pioneered this version of the instruction set with AMD64, and Intel actually adopted it as Intel 64, with minor differences[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Intel_64

flatiron• 7 years ago

If it’s strictly 64 bit it’s not x86-64 it’s amd64 but the rest of your comment is accurate.

molticrystal• 7 years ago

The original specification, created by AMD and released in 2000, has been implemented by AMD, Intel and VIA.
Intel's project was originally codenamed Yamhill. After several years of denying its existence, Intel announced at the February 2004 IDF that the project was indeed underway.

If Intel wasn't so focused on the Itanium they would of beat AMD by years.

Anybody who was following the industry at the time knew about Yamhill at least by 2002, though Intel had conceptions on how to extend x32 to x64 well before that in a natural way, but instead went the resource and engineering draining Itanium route, allowing AMD to produce the first available chips.

While I only know murmuring on the peripherial about Intel's early x64, I'd love to hear insider knowledge about why management decided Itanium was so hot that they dropped everything about bringing x32 to its logical x64 conclusion.

Lev1a• 7 years ago

they would of beat

* they would have beaten

chrisseaton3• 7 years ago

wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Microsoft is working on bringing x86-64 emulation to Windows 10 on ARM

Isn’t that exactly what the title says? Which bit are you quibbling with? Or has the title been changed?

Dylan168072• 7 years ago

That AMD made x86-64, not Intel.

axaxs• 7 years ago

I'd argue that x86-64 is more clear and precise. Intel has other 64 bit architectures...

new_realist• 7 years ago

I wonder if Apple will beat them to it.

kyriakos2• 7 years ago

Apple is more likely to say no to backwards compatibility. Microsoft on the other hand is the polar opposite.

amluto3• 7 years ago

MS removed 16-bit support on 64-bit Windows. Linux and WINE can run older Windows programs than Windows can! So, if Microsoft is the polar opposite, then Linux must be the stratospheric opposite.

screye• 7 years ago

Apple can afford to do that, and still retain royal customers. The lock-in is too real.

Microsoft on the other hand has to keep literally everyone happy (90% of the world not on Linux or Mac). Ofc, they can't abandon backwards compatibility.

tasogare• 7 years ago

I don't understand why Microsoft persist so much on ARM tablets with their limited OS given their history of failure.

threatripper2• 7 years ago

ARM might win against the x86 architecture in more and more areas. They already beat Atom on phones and tablets.

Intel might run into serious problems for whatever reason we can't even imagine today.

Apple switched from Power to Intel when IBM stopped being competitive in their area. Apple is rumored to also work on the switch to ARM.

It is usually a good idea to invest into a few alternatives if only it is to bring them up in negotiations.

scarface743• 7 years ago

The reason that IBM/Motorola stop being competitive was the cost of staying competitive was to great compared to the number of processors they hope to sell. By the time that Apple made the switch to Intel, they were the only PPC customers besides game consoles and mainframes that had different needs. Apple was only selling five or six million computers back then.

Now, Apple sells about as many ARM based devices than all of the PC manufacturers combined [1] sell x86 chips. Apple will be its own best customer.

[1] Apple sold about 230-240 million iPhones, iPads, watches, AppleTVs and if it start selling ARM Macs it will add about 16-20 million to that number.

muststopmyths2• 7 years ago

They're trying to "unlimit" it by making emulated x86/x64 apps work, otherwise the chicken/egg/app/platform problem persists.

Supposedly ARM is more power efficient than the x86 family, so you'd get lighter laptops with longer battery life.

I would love to know from the HW experts here what happens when you start running your usual desktop workload on an ARM device. Does the power consumption stay low ?

looking at how quickly phones run out of battery when playing games, my feeling is that the ARM advantage is over-hyped, but I'd be interested in opinions from people who know this stuff.

scarface743• 7 years ago

Phones have much smaller batteries and you’re not going to usually be playing graphic intensive games on a laptop. Besides, games usually use the GPU which would use up more battery.

lostgame3• 7 years ago

Reviews have stated the emulation performance is terrible - akin to Rosetta back in the PPC/Intel transition into OSX.

I read two reviews which stated even 32-bit Chrome’s performance was terrible compared to the native ARM 64-bit Edge, and Photoshop, etc, are borderline unusable.

Stranger still, the Surface Pro X’s battery life has been reported to be on par or poorer than the less expensive Intel-native Pro 7’s - I’m rather confused by Microsoft’s strategy here.

The Surface RT didn’t work.

Causality1• 7 years ago

I'm sure there's a long German word that means "having your opinion about a product lowered due to a press release announcing a feature you already thought it had."

thrill• 7 years ago

schlaginsgesichtmitkaltemfisch

maxpert• 7 years ago

Who knew Wintel combination will become the curse for Microsoft. Microsoft paid heavy price including a complete OS flop, and losing mobile war; just because developers were not ready to leave Win32 API and step down to WinRT (buggy and half baked). Current emulation for 32-bit is slow and reviews are terrible. I wonder if Intel will ever be able to develop something revolutionary that runs x64 and energy efficient as ARM.

snagglegaggle• 7 years ago

WinRT may have been buggy but the mobile OSes were not so bad. They had mobile OS releases mirroring XP, 7, 8/8.1, and 10. The problem is Microsoft made no commitment to non-secureboot hardware on non-Intel devices and all of these devices were extremely locked down and not accessible to end users. Consequently, no one cared about them. You probably didn't even know they had a mobile OS patterned after Win7, right?

This turned around a little bit for the 8/8.1 and 10 mobile OS releases but not by much. A lot of stuff just wasn't possible on a Windows phone, even though the garden experience was exceptional.

lostgame3• 7 years ago

> You probably didn't even know they had a mobile OS patterned after Win7, right?

To the contrary, I stuck with Windows phone forever. I loved it.

blinkingled3• 7 years ago

This is stupid. Most desktop people don't want to touch ARM anything and rightly so - Qualcomm's chips suck (Apple's do great but even they don't seem to think they're rest to go ARM Mac yet), there's no battery life advantage especially when you do all the desktop things and you have to deal with ARM snowflake crap along with vastly limited SoC support for new OS versions. And needless to say without specialized CPU support the 64-bit Intel emulation is going to be dog slow - remember emulating ARM Android images on X64?

There's literally no upside to this. I just wish AMD puts out a great mobile CPU and we can have even better competition for Intel in laptop market.

So no thanks - I'll let Intel have their laptop monopoly if that means I can run standard x86 hardware with great support for non Windows OSes.

htk• 7 years ago

This comment couldn’t be more shortsighted.

For one, I see Macs running on Apple’s own ARM chips a real possibility in the near future.

blinkingled3• 7 years ago

Can I ask you why? Do you know what you will be gaining and what you will be giving up? If it's just geeky dream it's ok but saying it like it would be objectively a better result to throw away standardized x86 for ARM on the desktop when you can also just carry a iPad instead is just silly. In Apple's case it's not going to be x86 and ARM macs - just ARM macs and for their business it makes total monetary sense to control everything from SoC/CPU to the OS. But if you are getting excited about that as a consumer, you don't really understand the irony - move away from Intel monopoly to more Apple monopoly.

mlacks• 7 years ago

The whole point of starting when you’re not ready, is to get tour foot in the door so you have something to improve upon.

Even if the emulation is slow and barely useable, it can and will be refined using modern tools and practices in the future.

Trying something out that is out of the norm is the the whole point of innovation. I’m super excited to see Microsoft’s progress in this space.

blinkingled3• 7 years ago

That's all hunky dory but no amount of software innovation is going to speed up running x64 code on ARM. Qualcomm would just need to build that into the CPU and at that point it is a circus.

So yeah I am cool with trying out things that have potential but something that has not upside and will never be good - because CS - I will justly call it stupid.

lostgame3• 7 years ago

I am a huge fan of the Surface line, and a Pro 7 may very likely be my next laptop - but I just don’t get the Surface Pro X as a product.

It is more expensive than the Pro 7, and the x86 emulation has been disappointingly slow.

Reviews have been poor on average, and it’s all reminiscent of the Surface RT debacle - except at least the RT was less expensive - not more.

Microsoft is working to bring 64-bit Intel app emulation to Windows on ARM

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