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I think we'd see a serious boom in Windows on ARM if ARM vendors had a performance benefit to offer and Microsoft implemented a backwards compatibility layer as

by arsome 6y ago

I think we'd see a serious boom in Windows on ARM if ARM vendors had a performance benefit to offer and Microsoft implemented a backwards compatibility layer as Apple has in this case. The difference here is in the offering. Microsoft was making a tablet offering where they're just not competitive with no ability to use x86 software while Apple here is offering much more - backwards compatible and all. Until then there's just no reason to bother with ARM and vendors and users alike can see that. Only recently has Microsoft announced a backwards compatibility layer, if we can see some hardware vendors step up to Apple levels of performance, there might be a serious shot now: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315733-64-bit-x86-emulation-officially-coming-to-windows-on-arm https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315733-64-bit-x86-emul...

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
> Microsoft implemented a backwards compatibility layer as Apple has in this case Windows-on-ARM already has 32-bit x86 emulation - and 64-bit x64 emulation is coming soon: * https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on... * https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315733-64-bit-x86-emulation-officially-coming-to-windows-on-arm https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315733-64-bit-x86-emul... I haven't looked too deeply, but it seems to use the same WoW (Windows-on-Windows) mechanism that's been present in Windows NT going back to at least Windows XP 64-bit Edition (no, not 2005's "Windows XP x64", but the original 2001 Windows XP for Intel Itanium IA-64). > The WOW64 layer of Windows 10 allows x86 code to run on the ARM64 version of Windows 10. x86 emulation works by compiling blocks of x86 instructions into ARM64 instructions with optimizations to improve performance. A service caches these translated blocks of code to reduce the overhead of instruction translation and allow for optimization when the code runs again. The caches are produced for each module so that other apps can make use of them on first launch. Looks like Windows dynamically translates code in DLLs/EXEs on a JIT/on-demand basis and caches each translated run-of-code.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Running x86 code via Rosetta on the MacBook Air is significantly faster than it is running on the previous generation. With the Surface X, that isn't remotely the case. It's a pretty major gap. This is from the Verge's review of the Surface Pro X: > The worst part is that even if an app installs, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have a great experience. Photoshop installs and opens just fine on the Surface Pro X, but the usability of it is terrible. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20950487/microsoft-surface-pro-x-7-review-comparison-specs-photos https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20950487/microsoft-surfac... Maybe it's improved since then? Everything I've heard suggests there is a pretty big performance penalty running x86 code on Windows ARM. If there is a significant performance hit on the M1, the performance gains of the M1 are so good, it erases the difference. The only way an emulation layer works is if the new platform is fast enough to erase that difference. When Apple moved from PowerPC to x86, it nearly did. With this transition, Apple knocked it out of the park. Microsoft? Not so much.
  - Arcuru 6y ago
    Rosetta seems to have a similar performance hit to Microsoft's solution (10-30% overhead compared to native, depending on the workload). The difference is that Microsoft is locked into using Qualcomm chips, which just aren't very close to Apple's performance.
    - ogre_codes 6y ago
      The impression I got was that it was a lot slower than a 30% performance hit, but perhaps the Qualcomm CPU is that much slower? If so, it really begs the question—Why bother making a tablet-laptop thing which performs so poorly?
      - lmm 6y ago
        The tablet-laptop form factor is great, and a lot of people simply don't need high performance but do need to run some specific line of business application from 2003, so including x86 emulation makes sense.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  Huge difference in performance though. M1 seems to run things on Rosetta emulation in some cases faster than they ran natively because of how much uplift the hardware has. Microsoft ARM devices have such lower performance than any emulation will run worse than natively, making it essentially unusable as a serious offering.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by arsome 6y ago

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

> Microsoft implemented a backwards compatibility layer as Apple has in this case Windows-on-ARM already has 32-bit x86 emulation - and 64-bit x64 emulation is coming soon: * https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on... * https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315733-64-bit-x86-emulation-officially-coming-to-windows-on-arm https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315733-64-bit-x86-emul... I haven't looked too deeply, but it seems to use the same WoW (Windows-on-Windows) mechanism that's been present in Windows NT going back to at least Windows XP 64-bit Edition (no, not 2005's "Windows XP x64", but the original 2001 Windows XP for Intel Itanium IA-64). > The WOW64 layer of Windows 10 allows x86 code to run on the ARM64 version of Windows 10. x86 emulation works by compiling blocks of x86 instructions into ARM64 instructions with optimizations to improve performance. A service caches these translated blocks of code to reduce the overhead of instruction translation and allow for optimization when the code runs again. The caches are produced for each module so that other apps can make use of them on first launch. Looks like Windows dynamically translates code in DLLs/EXEs on a JIT/on-demand basis and caches each translated run-of-code.

ogre_codes 6y ago
Running x86 code via Rosetta on the MacBook Air is significantly faster than it is running on the previous generation. With the Surface X, that isn't remotely the case. It's a pretty major gap. This is from the Verge's review of the Surface Pro X: > The worst part is that even if an app installs, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have a great experience. Photoshop installs and opens just fine on the Surface Pro X, but the usability of it is terrible. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20950487/microsoft-surface-pro-x-7-review-comparison-specs-photos https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20950487/microsoft-surfac... Maybe it's improved since then? Everything I've heard suggests there is a pretty big performance penalty running x86 code on Windows ARM. If there is a significant performance hit on the M1, the performance gains of the M1 are so good, it erases the difference. The only way an emulation layer works is if the new platform is fast enough to erase that difference. When Apple moved from PowerPC to x86, it nearly did. With this transition, Apple knocked it out of the park. Microsoft? Not so much.
- Arcuru 6y ago
  Rosetta seems to have a similar performance hit to Microsoft's solution (10-30% overhead compared to native, depending on the workload). The difference is that Microsoft is locked into using Qualcomm chips, which just aren't very close to Apple's performance.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    The impression I got was that it was a lot slower than a 30% performance hit, but perhaps the Qualcomm CPU is that much slower? If so, it really begs the question—Why bother making a tablet-laptop thing which performs so poorly?
    - lmm 6y ago
      The tablet-laptop form factor is great, and a lot of people simply don't need high performance but do need to run some specific line of business application from 2003, so including x86 emulation makes sense.
breakfastduck 6y ago
Huge difference in performance though. M1 seems to run things on Rosetta emulation in some cases faster than they ran natively because of how much uplift the hardware has. Microsoft ARM devices have such lower performance than any emulation will run worse than natively, making it essentially unusable as a serious offering.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]