4 ms·

How did I not already know Microsoft had a working x86 emulator.. this is a massive game changer for the laptop space if it's fast and reliable enough, as afaik

by make3 9y ago

How did I not already know Microsoft had a working x86 emulator.. this is a massive game changer for the laptop space if it's fast and reliable enough, as afaik ARM chips are so much more power efficient for similar perf

cmurf 9y ago
Pretty sure it was this acquisition. https://news.microsoft.com/2003/02/19/microsoft-acquires-connectix-virtual-machine-technology/ https://news.microsoft.com/2003/02/19/microsoft-acquires-con...
- my123 9y ago
  It's actually unrelated with Connectix. Connectix is much older, and was killed a long time ago. Virtual PC for Macs was a full-blown JIT though.
  - mistercow 9y ago
    Every time I read anything about Connectix, I become more convinced that they were run by some combination of time travelers and genetically modified super-hackers.
    - mrpippy 9y ago
      MODE32. Virtual PC. Virtual Game Station (PS1 emulator). RAM Doubler. Speed Doubler. QuickCam. One hell of a run.
zeta0134 9y ago
There are several existing and excellent x86 emulators floating around. In the open source space, QEMU is quite fantastic and well supported. I'm not surprised at all that Microsoft managed to either develop one in house, or acquire one. x86 is an old and very well understood architecture at this point. The difficulty thus isn't in writing a working emulator, it's in figuring out which features you can support from a business perspective without treading on still active patents. Microsoft is one of the few companies that can probably absorb a patent fight here and come out on top, and if they succeed, it will counter-intuitively threaten the continued dominance of x86. Once they can release an ARM-based version of Windows that sports backwards compatibility (the primary missing feature that caused Windows RT to fail spectacularly) more mobile machines will be free to use ARM chips, and software developers will have incentives to natively support ARM targets for power efficiency reasons. Since Intel banks on x86 continuing to be the dominant architecture in the desktop and laptop space, they must feel threatened by this move, so the suit doesn't surprise me. They'll now be fighting an uphill battle. On the one hand, Intel processors are still pretty much king in raw performance, but on the other hand, very few consumers actually need the kind of performance that you can only get on Intel chips anymore. A decent web browser runs on just about anything, so an architecture shift in the consumer space is quite plausible. Some could argue that it's already happened with tablets.
- deepnotderp 9y ago
  Not to be pedantic, but x86 is simply an ISA, not necessarily the microarchitecture.
- __s 9y ago
  The huge tech thing here is that running Windows-on-ARM you can run x86 programs which can then call into the Windows-on-ARM OS. So no need to virtualize the OS
  - kasabali 9y ago
    Dynamic binary translation is not exactly a huge tech thing.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  I thought the primary reason Windows RT sucked was it's reliance on the horrendously terrible Windows Store? You couldn't even recompile popular apps if you wanted to, you had to port them to the store system. Unless you were MS, then you could grant yourself an exception and let stuff run direct (Office).
  - kungito 9y ago
    You make it sound so evil while the fact is that the store is for a lot more secure and sandboxed apps so you can't just put any kind in the store. The reason why they let their own apps in like office is because they are ok for guaranteeing for their own products while they do not want to discriminate other app developers among themselves on who can and who can't put an unsecure app into the store
    - MichaelGG 9y ago
      In theory. In practise, the store was, and is, full of shit. Junk apps, because MS paid people to push apps out. Junk apps and scams, because MS does no review or policing. Even Netflix had to go to MS 3 times in order for them to block fake Netflix apps. Other companies selling well-known programs have told me they simply cannot get MS to respond. Search for "Game of Thrones" right now on the Windows Store. Or WinRAR. Microsoft doesn't even verify their "publishers" are actual companies, have valid URLs for the store listing (most of these junk apps just go to "http://" http://"). It's been and remains a joke.
ZenoArrow 9y ago
Emulating x86 on ARM is going to be less power efficient than running x86 code natively.

by make3 9y ago

cmurf 9y ago

Pretty sure it was this acquisition. https://news.microsoft.com/2003/02/19/microsoft-acquires-connectix-virtual-machine-technology/ https://news.microsoft.com/2003/02/19/microsoft-acquires-con...

my123 9y ago
It's actually unrelated with Connectix. Connectix is much older, and was killed a long time ago. Virtual PC for Macs was a full-blown JIT though.
- mistercow 9y ago
  Every time I read anything about Connectix, I become more convinced that they were run by some combination of time travelers and genetically modified super-hackers.
  - mrpippy 9y ago
    MODE32. Virtual PC. Virtual Game Station (PS1 emulator). RAM Doubler. Speed Doubler. QuickCam. One hell of a run.

zeta0134 9y ago

There are several existing and excellent x86 emulators floating around. In the open source space, QEMU is quite fantastic and well supported. I'm not surprised at all that Microsoft managed to either develop one in house, or acquire one. x86 is an old and very well understood architecture at this point. The difficulty thus isn't in writing a working emulator, it's in figuring out which features you can support from a business perspective without treading on still active patents. Microsoft is one of the few companies that can probably absorb a patent fight here and come out on top, and if they succeed, it will counter-intuitively threaten the continued dominance of x86. Once they can release an ARM-based version of Windows that sports backwards compatibility (the primary missing feature that caused Windows RT to fail spectacularly) more mobile machines will be free to use ARM chips, and software developers will have incentives to natively support ARM targets for power efficiency reasons. Since Intel banks on x86 continuing to be the dominant architecture in the desktop and laptop space, they must feel threatened by this move, so the suit doesn't surprise me. They'll now be fighting an uphill battle. On the one hand, Intel processors are still pretty much king in raw performance, but on the other hand, very few consumers actually need the kind of performance that you can only get on Intel chips anymore. A decent web browser runs on just about anything, so an architecture shift in the consumer space is quite plausible. Some could argue that it's already happened with tablets.

deepnotderp 9y ago
Not to be pedantic, but x86 is simply an ISA, not necessarily the microarchitecture.
__s 9y ago
The huge tech thing here is that running Windows-on-ARM you can run x86 programs which can then call into the Windows-on-ARM OS. So no need to virtualize the OS
- kasabali 9y ago
  Dynamic binary translation is not exactly a huge tech thing.
MichaelGG 9y ago
I thought the primary reason Windows RT sucked was it's reliance on the horrendously terrible Windows Store? You couldn't even recompile popular apps if you wanted to, you had to port them to the store system. Unless you were MS, then you could grant yourself an exception and let stuff run direct (Office).
- kungito 9y ago
  You make it sound so evil while the fact is that the store is for a lot more secure and sandboxed apps so you can't just put any kind in the store. The reason why they let their own apps in like office is because they are ok for guaranteeing for their own products while they do not want to discriminate other app developers among themselves on who can and who can't put an unsecure app into the store
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    In theory. In practise, the store was, and is, full of shit. Junk apps, because MS paid people to push apps out. Junk apps and scams, because MS does no review or policing. Even Netflix had to go to MS 3 times in order for them to block fake Netflix apps. Other companies selling well-known programs have told me they simply cannot get MS to respond. Search for "Game of Thrones" right now on the Windows Store. Or WinRAR. Microsoft doesn't even verify their "publishers" are actual companies, have valid URLs for the store listing (most of these junk apps just go to "http://" http://"). It's been and remains a joke.

ZenoArrow 9y ago

Emulating x86 on ARM is going to be less power efficient than running x86 code natively.