6 ms·
isn't it microsoft who are making x86 emulation for ARM
by Zekio 10y ago
isn't it microsoft who are making x86 emulation for ARM
- frozenport 10y agoI would think any cost per performance advantage would be lost.
- delinka 10y agoI don't think you'd run an entire OS like this. But some processes might not have been ported to ARM and those need an emulation layer. Think Apple's Rosetta for running PowerPC binaries on Intel processors to make the switch less painful.
- my123 10y agoARM and ARM64 Windows are 100% native code out of the box. On ARM64, the translation engine might be disabled if you really want to.
- infogulch 10y agoFor the emulated apps, sure. But apps compiled directly to the new architecture will gain a lot and benefit from the new architecture. Microsoft is big on backwards compatibility, so adopting a new architecture would be a complete non-starter if it weren't for an emulator.
- kerhackernews 10y agoI think the point is that Microsoft can how ship Surface devices with ARM chips that can occasionally run x86 applications when needed. And it also allows Microsoft to ditch Intel if they really wanted to.
- douche 10y agoHopefully they get it right this time. The last ARM Surfaces (Surface RTs) were hot garbage, barely functional enough to do email and a little web browsing on.
- scholia 10y agoActually they were better than that. Users loved them (check out the star ratings on user reviews) and some are still in use. The design was fundamentally flawed for other reasons, but they performed reasonably well compared to rival tablets, while also offering multiple log-ons, multi-tasking and full Microsoft Office, which those other tablets lacked. They also supported Active Directory, ditto.
- douche 10y agoMaybe I got a bad one then, but I was not real impressed with mine. 1.) Keyboard constantly flakes out and stops working - or the keyboard and touchpad works, but the touch screen stops working. 2.) Extremely limited software choices. You're stuck with whatever small subset of the garbage in the Windows Store was cross-compiled for Windows RT. Stuck with IE, no options to get Chrome or Firefox or something that works a little better. 3.) Extremely anemic performance. Mine chokes and dies trying to read email (in the godawful Metro Mail app) and browse the ticketing webapp that my company uses. 4.) Suffers the brunt of the awful Windows 8 Metro UI design changes. 5.) The operating system is effectively dead in the water, and won't be getting updates. 6.) Microsoft took a $900 million write-down on the product[1]. [1] https://arstechnica.com/business/2013/07/microsoft-takes-900-million-hit-for-unsold-surface-rts-in-4q13-earnings/ https://arstechnica.com/business/2013/07/microsoft-takes-900...
- scholia 10y agoI haven't seen the keyboard problem. The main one I saw was a disappearing mouse pointer, which was fixed by removing and re-attaching the keyboard. Weird. You could try a software reset for the performance problems, bearing in mind that the updates will drive you mad. Unfortunately you can't fix the slow CPU or the too-small RAM. However, the current performance should still compare reasonably with another 2012 tablet. > The operating system is effectively dead in the water, and won't be getting updates. Look out for Windows 10 on the Snapdragon 835 later this year ;-) > Microsoft took a $900 million write-down on the product Yes, I bet that hurt, even when you have the odd $100 billion in spare cash.
- my123 10y agoIt's Microsoft indeed.