Windows on ARM Is Here to Stay

https://spectrum.ieee.org/windows-on-arm

by jnord • 2 years ago

28 76 2 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

uyzstvqs• 2 years ago

I was sceptical at first as I very much remember Windows 8 RT, but it seems pretty good. Now I'm curious if ARM can beat x86 in the high-performance desktop market as well. More efficiency is great for less power usage in laptops, but can it also mean more scalable performance in desktops?

zuhsetaqi• 2 years ago

When we look at Apples desktop ARM PCs they are at least not bad compared to x86

guappa4• 2 years ago

The amount of shilling for apple that happens online is so massive that I'd want to try a machine in person before deciding if to buy it or not, because I can't trust anything that I read online.

edit: the downvotes are kinda proving my point.

jsheard• 2 years ago

The crucial difference being that Apples developer ecosystem is accustomed to jumping through whatever hoops Apple demands when they deprecate something, while Microsoft has built their brand on keeping Windows software working forever if at all possible. There's ups and downs to both approaches, but for an ISA transition the Apple way of dictating that everyone will switch or get left behind is obviously a huge advantage.

Apple is so aggressive about deprecation that it wouldn't be surprising if they remove Rosetta 2 within in a few years and kill any software which didn't get updated to ARM, just like they killed 32bit Intel software, and PPC software before that. Microsoft is never going to be able to do that.

creshal3• 2 years ago

Apple is a poor comparison since they switched when Intel's offerings had been uncompetitive compared to AMD's for several years. The last gen of x86 Macs was also in many ways the worst.

Zambyte3• 2 years ago

It's unfortunate that there is so much proprietary software in the wild that is forever stuck targeting x86. If we move past x86 on the desktop in our lifetimes, I bet a large percentage of people using desktops will continue to carry around x86 emulators for the rest of our lives.

darby_nine2• 2 years ago

I imagine most devices with have x86 emulation built in. even obstinately anti-consumer vendors like Apple and Google will fold one day.

tambourine_man• 2 years ago

The amount of assembly code is getting smaller in absolute and relative terms everyday. We've been moving code up the stack where it is mostly platform neutral for decades. Each transition makes the next one easier.

Take the Mac, for instance.

- 68k -> PPC: terribly painful, lots of ASM, emulation.

- PPC -> x86: hard, but mostly done in 2/3 years.

- PPC -> ARM: what transition?

neallindsay• 2 years ago

QEMU works great for legacy applications.

Almondsetat• 2 years ago

Any news on the snapdragon X situation? How are these things on the market if they got sued?

zamadatix2• 2 years ago

Getting sued doesn't stop you from doing things, injunctive relief or losing the case does. At this point neither has happened and it'll probably be a while before it does (it's been 2 years already at this point).

_cenw2• 2 years ago

Windows on ARM was already very decent on virtualized Apple Silicon, running x86 binaries without much fuzz, they sure have been working on it in the background ever since Windows RT.

trollbridge3• 2 years ago

I use this daily, but it does seem rather absurd that the only way to run Windows ARM on a high-end laptop is... to buy an Apple product, boot an Apple OS, fire up a third-party VM, and then run Windows inside that. (You can't even get a Surface Pro X with more than 16GB of memory.)

Meanwhile Microsoft ships apps that don't work on ARM, like Flight Simulator.

chucke19923• 2 years ago

Not sure what this game has to do with "Microsoft shipping apps".

sixothree2• 2 years ago

Surface Pro has a 32 gb model.

jmclnx2• 2 years ago

Interesting, I was seriously wondering who would buy Windows on Arm on purpose. But in a way, you answered my question.

At work, there are some SAP development functions that required Windows, so people with MACs would beg, borrow and steal to get Windows on their MAC inside a VM. Apple's 'M*' chips ended that.

That was R/3, I do not know about the new version of SAP. I would think they would fully support Apple with that. But you never know.

mcculley• 2 years ago

I use Windows on Arm daily inside a VM on a MacBook Pro just so I can run QuickBooks.

Nezghul• 2 years ago

btw. any news when the next ARM laptops will appear?

jmclnx2• 2 years ago

Will be cool running Linux or a BSD on one :)

betaby• 2 years ago

Not going to happen. Expect worse that Asahi Linux state level of support.

walterbell4• 2 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40628573

Qualcomm has most of the critical functions working inside.. Linux 6.9.. critical functions include UEFI-based boot support along with all the standard bootloaders like Grub and systemd.. Functions that are being worked on for future iterations of Linux include additions to battery support, on-board display connectivity, external DisplayPort connectivity, sleep and wake-up functions on the GPU, camera support, video support, better CPU frequency support, and speaker/mic/headset enablement. These functions are expected to arrive in Linux 6.10 and 6.11.

VyseofArcadia• 2 years ago

I dunno. Microsoft is pretty great at backpedaling. Even when they don't abandon a product entirely[0], they'll fold like a cheap suit and start making compromises at the first whiff of customer pushback.

[0] I mean, they're not Google

nubinetwork• 2 years ago

I hope this fails faster than the Amazon Fire phone... okay, well maybe not that fast.

andrewstuart2• 2 years ago

The greatest thing about Intel/AMD chips is they just work always.

I’ve got zero tolerance for crashes and weird behavior and edge cases and whenever I tried ARM servers that’s exactly what I got.

Computing is unreliable enough without throwing arm into the windows world… it’ll be painful for sure. I can’t see any benefit in arm so compelling that I’d want it over the standard cpu architecture.

Compatibility is everything. It was different for Apple because they control the entire ecosystem and frankly their software engineering on cross compatibility was startlingly good. Microsoft doesn’t have that level of control plus it’s got windows cruft plus drivers and third party hardware and software and it’s hard to imagine a seamless experience. Why would I buy that…. what’s the benefit?

_joel2• 2 years ago

That's not my experience, we've moved many cloud workloads over to ARM and haven't suffered stability issues. Maybe you mean the Windows implementation on ARM, if you're using that, but that's not the chip's fault.

andrewstuart2• 2 years ago

To be clear I’m not saying arm is unstable I’m saying I can’t imagine the windows ecosystem being reliably compatible.

There will be problems, there absolutely has to be.

mmaniac3• 2 years ago

The fact is that hardware, operating systems, CPU architectures - all these things are boring. We use computers as tools for doing the interesting tasks.

Users only start to care about these things when they start to get in their way. If a new ARM PC fails to run some legacy app that's critical to the workflow, then they'll discover that it's because their shiny new laptop has some weird new technology inside it. And then they'll hate it because the computer is no longer fit for purpose. On the other hand, if everything works, then they'll carry on with their lives as if nothing happened.

walterbell4• 2 years ago

https://www.theverge.com/24191671/copilot-plus-pcs-laptops-q...

Snapdragon chips really shine in multicore benchmarks, overtaking all the other CPUs aside from Apple’s M2 Max and M3 Max.. Snapdragon laptops are generally cheaper than their Intel or AMD counterparts.. Qualcomm Dell XPS 13 is $200 cheaper and the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is $150 cheaper.. [upcoming Intel] Lunar Lake will be closer in design to Apple Silicon, with RAM incorporated into the chip itself, and Intel claims that getting rid of hyperthreading will decrease power consumption, so laptops with these chips will supposedly get better battery life

https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/qualcomm-spends-million...

on-device AI features will eventually receive widespread adoption, but it will take several years for that to happen. However, the simple fact that we have another CPU option over Intel and AMD is already a big win among consumers.. the improved battery life with comparable performance that Snapdragon laptops bring will force x86 chip manufacturers to innovate on power efficiency or be left in the dust.

jsjohnst• 2 years ago

It’s amazing to me how little folks dig into the actual data of the test results used to make these “headline” claims. As is always the case, there’s some serious cherry picking of stats and a ton of apples to oranges comparisons.

walterbell4• 2 years ago

The stat driving Qualcomm laptop sales is battery life, https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/qualcomm-spends-million...

Snapdragon-powered laptops have still precipitated some good sales numbers, with Copilot+ AI PCs raking in 20% of global PC sales during launch week. However, industry analyst Avi Greengart said that most users purchased these AI laptops for their better battery life, rather than their AI capabilities.

segasaturn2• 2 years ago

How come Windows works on ARM but there's no way to run it bare metal on Apple Silicon? Asahi works so Microsoft should have the resources to port it shouldn't they?

freedomben3• 2 years ago

Asahi works so Microsoft should have the resources to port it shouldn't they?

Asahi works because open source devs working for free made it work by reverse engineering stuff.

But why should Microsoft spend the effort to make Windows work on Apple Silicon, when by far the biggest benficiary of that would be Apple who would sell more hardware? Apple should be the one to invest resources to do it. Not to mention that if Microsoft did it, Apple could throw a wrench in it at any time, leaving Microsoft with users that expect support that it can't support because Apple won't let it (or makes it more difficult than it needs to be).

segasaturn2• 2 years ago

You would think as a software vendor, Microsoft has incentive to port their software to run on as many platforms as possible.

jmull• 2 years ago

It would be on Apple to create and release Windows drivers, like they did for Windows on Intel Macs.

This time around I'm not sure they have the incentive.

whizzter• 2 years ago

Probably either an unwillingness from Apple to share HW documentation with MS or MS viewing Apple as a direct competitor now that they have their own machines so they prefer not to undermine their own business.

Kye3• 2 years ago

They already have plenty of hardware makers building ARM laptops running Windows or planning to. Windows is still the dominant operating system outside mobile, and mobile hasn't yet killed laptops and desktops despite perennial announcements of their demise.

They have the resources to do all kinds of things they don't do for the same reason: why would they? What would they get out of it? Apple is nothing next to the smallest Windows OEM.

pjmlp2• 2 years ago

No business sense, want Windows buy a Windows laptop.

Asahi is also more a maker community reverse engineering Apple laptops, because they can.

A rounding error on the amount laptops Apple sells.

chucke19923• 2 years ago

The biggest advantage is that Microsoft somehow was able to bring a proper regular Windows to ARM devices. Now I don't if it still has the same level of BC support as x86 Windows, but still it is impressive.

kristjank• 2 years ago

The needed prerequisite for staying is arriving. Unlike M1, I have yet to see all these new Qualcomm ARM AI buzzword wunderwaffen. We're at a point where a 8yo computer works exceedingly well and a real breaktrough is needed to signify any real generational shift. Not to mention that I want my laptop to run things other than Windows. 20 Hours runtime is easy when you're incapable of running real programs.

zamadatix2• 2 years ago

Qualcomm already upstreamed a lot into the 6.8/6.9 kernel, more including GPU have been submitted for 6.10/6.11 and existing Microsoft branded devices like Surface ARM run Linux. The programs run in Windows on ARM are no longer restricted/special and can be x86 32/64 bit as well.

It's really not a bad direction, the question is more is it the most interesting direction for most consumers when you include competition like Chromebooks on the low end and MacBooks on the high end.

cowmix• 2 years ago

I rushed out and bought one of the new Snapdragon laptops – the Lenovo Yoga Slim with 32GB RAM. I figured that since Microsoft marketed this as an "AI" laptop, it would be a perfect platform for ML development. However, my experience has been the complete opposite. Python for Windows ARM64 is a complete mess. You have to build almost every module from scratch, and it’s a nightmare of broken and buggy dependencies.

After 10+ years of Windows ARM, I find these basic toolchain gaps inexcusable.

For what it’s worth, WSL on Windows ARM64 is pretty much great.

Kye3• 2 years ago

Windows ARM is 10+ years old. Performant Windows ARM is not. There hasn't been an incentive to make all that stuff work until now because there wasn't much to do with it. I expect that will change soon.

ElectricSpoon• 2 years ago

WSL is alright. The real MVPs are the linux distros which have been building and shipping everything for arm64 for ages, and which happen to run on WSL.

cletus• 2 years ago

In the future two companies will be heavily studied in business school for how badly they blew their technical lead and proficiency to the point that it may be the daeth of them. Those companies are Boeing and Intel.

I would posit in both cases the problem is extreme financialization. Both companies had such a large market share (and even a monopoly in certain segments) that the much-quoted but apropos Steve Jobs quote [1] applies. All these modern CEOs seem capable of doing is stock buybacks, cutting costs and raising prices where they can.

In the 2000s, Intel faced a serious challenge from AMD with the Athlon/Opteron architecture. Intel's failures were a continuation of their Pentium 4 architecture and the company was only saved by the Pentium 3, which became the Pentium-M and the Centrino platform then the Core Duo and the modern CPUs we have now. They're all Pentium 3 descendants.

What we've seen over the last decade is most people have enough CPU power so the move has been towards smaller, cheaper and more energy-efficient CPUs. We've seen this in phones and then tablets and now CPUs. Apple's move to ARM was really the nail in the coffin for Intel as it culminated a decade of not being able to respond to the market.

Intel is seemingly unable to respond to this trend. All Intel CPUs still have super-high TDPs and haven't adopted any silicon to boost AI performance, which is increasingly going to matter. I fully expect this to be further integrated into the M4 and later CPUs.

I, too, expect Windows on ARM to be here to stay because there are simpnly too many advantages to the platform and it's going to eat away at the consumer market in a big way because ARM laptops and tablets will give people what they want: smaller, cheaper and more energy-efficient computers.

Meanwhile Intel just goes from disaster to disaster. The move to 10nm became a running joke almost to the level of Duke Nukem Forever. Intel's once-legendary fab ability is seemingly being eclipsed by TSMC and ARM chips seem to be the primary beneficiary of that.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM

walterbell4• 2 years ago

All Intel CPUs still have super-high TDPs and haven't adopted any silicon to boost AI performance

Lunar Lake claims 17W TDP with 48 TOPS NPU, https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-meteor-lake-npu-meet-intels-d...

user070223• 2 years ago

Well if ARM laptops more power efficient, cheaper, faster which makes consumer choose it (either by going to iMac or installing linux) Microsoft might lose market share. It's also a great excuse to get new eye balls on legacy code and fix all king of issues

On another note: Windows have (by default) tons of legacy to support a lot of different hardware Am I wrong to assume that that most drivers on ARM cpu running through virtualization? Does Microsoft actually build them or get them from partners to install on the system

snvzz• 2 years ago

Nah. Once Windows on RISC-V appears (I would place in 2027, at worst), it is doomed.

Same for Windows on x86. The end.

Windows on ARM Is Here to Stay

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