5 ms·

Payback time? https://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-offers-two-customers-skylake-xeon-cpus/ https://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-prefer

by mtgx 10y ago

Payback time? https://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-offers-two-customers-skylake-xeon-cpus/ https://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-off... Okay, obviously this partnership started years back, but it's nice to see that not everyone is willing to encourage Intel's monopoly, as Google often does (in Chromebooks, too, even though Intel's chips are virtually unnecessary there). Although, to be fair, the "Wintel" name didn't come out of nowhere. Microsoft obviously played its part in growing Intel's monopoly for a long time, too.

rbanffy 10y ago
Microsoft tried as much as it could to avoid being locked into Intel. They built Windows NT to be multi-platform and, at a given time, it ran on MIPS, PPC, Alpha and a later version on Itanium. Intel has been much more dependent on Microsoft's monopoly than the contrary.
- throwaway2048 10y ago
  the amount of relevant windows software that can run on ARM is a rounding error, and x86 emulation on ARM sounds completely unusable. Microsoft is very dependant on x86.
  - heisenbit 10y ago
    Microsoft is still very dependent on x86. But the two main platform with potential to go forward: Server and Office are now both running on ARM.
    - rbanffy 10y ago
      The opposite is still very much the case. 64-bit desktop processors only started selling when a version capable of running 32-bit Windows became available (and not from Intel, who was putting all their eggs on Itanium) and only took off after a 64-bit version of Windows for them was released. Inertia is a powerful thing.
- flamedoge 10y ago
  So they translating asm to C?
  - acdha 10y ago
    No: NT was written in a portable high level language from the beginning. They had a few platform support ASM blocks but one of the big selling points in the 90s was true API compatibility across x86, PowerPC, Alpha, MIPS, etc. In the pre-Linux era that was huge – porting across vendors' different conceptions of Unix was a huge time-sink. DEC built an impressive x86 to Alpha dynamic binary translator but that was their work, not part of NT. See https://web.archive.org/web/20020503172231/http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Print.cfm?ArticleID=4494 https://web.archive.org/web/20020503172231/http://www.win200... for more history from that era
    - rbanffy 10y ago
      In the end, the lack of software (on Windows, the vendor would need to recompile the code for all ISAs) was what doomed Windows on PPC for me. Even though it was ridiculously fast, and a nicer experience than MacOS 8, neither Visual Studio nor Outlook were there.
- scholia 10y ago
  > Microsoft tried as much as it could to avoid being locked into Intel. ... while Intel kept looking at Linux and anything else that might help it avoid being locked into Microsoft ;-)
bryanlarsen 10y ago
Google's doing quite a bit of work to make ARM a viable Chromebook processor. http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/22/14691396/google-chromebook-arm-laptop-op1-processor-apptop http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/22/14691396/google-chromebook...
sjellis 10y ago
Google have been doing something with POWER CPUs for a few years now, at least on an experimental basis. 2016, Power 9: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3052951/cloud-computing/ibms-power-chips-hit-the-big-time-at-google.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/3052951/cloud-computing... 2014, Power 8: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2149080/google-shows-homegrown-server-with-ibm-power-chip.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2149080/google-shows-homegrow...
- kbenson 10y ago
  Each time Google looks into POWER, it seems to be when it's time to renegotiate with Intel. This is a tried and true tactic for better Intel pricing at this point. I was even talking about it (and got somewhat of a corroboration) a few days ago[1]. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13786170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13786170
  - sjellis 10y ago
    That's rather sad. POWER has seemed to be lingering in this half-life for many years now, where it's valuable enough for development to continue, but it's not competitive against Intel for broad use.

by mtgx 10y ago

rbanffy 10y ago

Microsoft tried as much as it could to avoid being locked into Intel. They built Windows NT to be multi-platform and, at a given time, it ran on MIPS, PPC, Alpha and a later version on Itanium. Intel has been much more dependent on Microsoft's monopoly than the contrary.

throwaway2048 10y ago
the amount of relevant windows software that can run on ARM is a rounding error, and x86 emulation on ARM sounds completely unusable. Microsoft is very dependant on x86.
- heisenbit 10y ago
  Microsoft is still very dependent on x86. But the two main platform with potential to go forward: Server and Office are now both running on ARM.
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    The opposite is still very much the case. 64-bit desktop processors only started selling when a version capable of running 32-bit Windows became available (and not from Intel, who was putting all their eggs on Itanium) and only took off after a 64-bit version of Windows for them was released. Inertia is a powerful thing.
flamedoge 10y ago
So they translating asm to C?
- acdha 10y ago
  No: NT was written in a portable high level language from the beginning. They had a few platform support ASM blocks but one of the big selling points in the 90s was true API compatibility across x86, PowerPC, Alpha, MIPS, etc. In the pre-Linux era that was huge – porting across vendors' different conceptions of Unix was a huge time-sink. DEC built an impressive x86 to Alpha dynamic binary translator but that was their work, not part of NT. See https://web.archive.org/web/20020503172231/http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Print.cfm?ArticleID=4494 https://web.archive.org/web/20020503172231/http://www.win200... for more history from that era
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    In the end, the lack of software (on Windows, the vendor would need to recompile the code for all ISAs) was what doomed Windows on PPC for me. Even though it was ridiculously fast, and a nicer experience than MacOS 8, neither Visual Studio nor Outlook were there.
scholia 10y ago
> Microsoft tried as much as it could to avoid being locked into Intel. ... while Intel kept looking at Linux and anything else that might help it avoid being locked into Microsoft ;-)

bryanlarsen 10y ago

Google's doing quite a bit of work to make ARM a viable Chromebook processor. http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/22/14691396/google-chromebook-arm-laptop-op1-processor-apptop http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/22/14691396/google-chromebook...

sjellis 10y ago

Google have been doing something with POWER CPUs for a few years now, at least on an experimental basis. 2016, Power 9: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3052951/cloud-computing/ibms-power-chips-hit-the-big-time-at-google.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/3052951/cloud-computing... 2014, Power 8: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2149080/google-shows-homegrown-server-with-ibm-power-chip.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2149080/google-shows-homegrow...

kbenson 10y ago
Each time Google looks into POWER, it seems to be when it's time to renegotiate with Intel. This is a tried and true tactic for better Intel pricing at this point. I was even talking about it (and got somewhat of a corroboration) a few days ago[1]. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13786170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13786170
- sjellis 10y ago
  That's rather sad. POWER has seemed to be lingering in this half-life for many years now, where it's valuable enough for development to continue, but it's not competitive against Intel for broad use.