9 ms·

Microsoft may be developing its own, in-house ARM CPU designs

82 points by elsewhen 6y ago

Darmody 6y ago
I hope it's true but I also hope we don't end up with every company selling its own CPU that works only with their own software. Something like what we have now with x84/amd64 but with more companies on the game.
- jdxcode 6y ago
  That definitely looks like the direction we're headed. Hard to see exactly what Intel's business would be in such a world.
  - trianglem 6y ago
    Get incorporated into one or more vertical chains and become a “fab” or have a massive architectural breakthrough that maintains the status quo.
- Slikey 6y ago
  In an ideal world that'd mean we become architecture agnostic and solutions should work on any CPU entering the market while ARM has still not achieved majority support on desktop solutions. Sadly I am certain there will be an extremely painful phase in which some software runs a lot better (more than the instruction set would explain) on some hardware and not on others. Driver support is going to be really poor and tech support will be a very secure job for the coming decade.. hah :)
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  Well this is how ARM has always been though, you can license an ARM chip and produce your own. That's why you have ARM chips from different companies. The difference with Apple was they are a majority share holder so they probably were able to fully retain rights. Seeing how successful Apple has been with their own chips, I guess Microsoft's taken it as a green light. What's sad is Microsoft's been pushing towards ARM for what feels like forever but it hasn't been up to part with x86. If I can honestly buy a Surface Book with ARM and still get a beefy laptop for a fraction of the cost I will happily buy the most expensive model. I also kind of hope this inspires them to work on Windows Mobile again in the future. They just need it to not lag too far behind Windows 10's core, which I heard was an issue from Windows 7 Mobile to Windows 8 Mobile (there was 0 upgrade path / it was a mess to upgrade).
  - jononor 6y ago
    Apple has never been a majority shareholder of ARM? I think the most they had was 20%, and that is many many years ago.
    - zimpenfish 6y ago
      Pretty close - their initial investment seems to have been 30%. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-11-28-fi-4993-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-11-28-fi-4993-s... "Apple has invested about $3 million (roughly 1.5 million pounds) for a 30% interest in the company" Also from that link, this amusing sentence: "Some analysts speculated that Apple might be eyeing ARM chips for use in a future notebook-sized computer"
      - klelatti 6y ago
        It was actually 43% https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/09/how-arm-has-already-saved-apple---twice https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/09/how-arm-has-alrea...
        zimpenfish 6y ago
        I can't find any contemporary reporting that says it was 43% - from what I can see, the first mention of 43% seems to come from this - https://www.cultofmac.com/97055/this-is-how-arm-saved-apple-from-going-bust-1990s/ https://www.cultofmac.com/97055/this-is-how-arm-saved-apple-... - which is bonkers wrong about the initial investment ($1.5b!). Do you have anything pre-dating this nonsense article which says it was 43%?
        klelatti 6y ago
        page 38 http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2015/04/102739951-05-01-acc.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/201... Edit: Ah I see Cult of Mac quoted Hauser. Well Hauser was a director of Acorn at the time. Also Robin Saxby talks about Apple and Acorn investing $1.5m and VLSI $250k so with some shares for staff that would be about 43%.
- adamnemecek 6y ago
  This might end up being a big boost for cross platform development.
neogodless 6y ago
Previous discussion on the original Bloomberg article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25472322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25472322
trzeci 6y ago
We've just started to clean the mess with browsers, where every browser made a custom custom extensions / API, and now we're entering a situation where every major player will create own CPU with special instructions, and that will cascade to compilers and ultimately to developers trying to provide cross platform apps.
- 8ytecoder 6y ago
  That’s how the personal computer revolution started. In fact that’s why high level languages were invented. Competition is good. Intel has stagnated the CPU for over a decade now. In addition we have better and standard instruction sets. Compilers are way more competent as well. If this means faster and more processing power and capabilities we’ll do more than fine.
- suyash 6y ago
  Won't make much difference in the life of software developers targeting Mac or Windows, unlike browser technology, native app toolkit and languages, api's for these two OS is already unique.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  It’s coming full circle. The period when one company made a processor, a second made an OS, and a third made a compiler looks like it’s ending. Controlling everything from start to finish like Apple with swift, m1, MacOS can give you a several percent advantage just because of the synergies you can take advantage of.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
    > Controlling everything from start to finish like Apple with swift, m1, MacOS can give you a several percent advantage just because of the synergies you can take advantage of. That's definitely true. Nevertheless, while Apple controls the whole chain for the iPhone, iPhones are not the most popular smartphones in the world. Depending on their use case, rational customers will buy not the best/most optimized, but the one that fits their needs at the lowest price.
tartaglia 6y ago
I’m optimistic about this. If you control everything within your product, then you’re able to fully take advantage of it.
prajwalshetty 6y ago
Getting the drivers to work was already a pain, well, this will make it worse it looks like.
mikece 6y ago
"May be?" Isn't the SQ1 their own in-house ARM design? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-pro-x/processor https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-pro...
- wmf 6y ago
  SQ1 appears to be designed by Qualcomm exclusively for Microsoft.
  - mikece 6y ago
    I misunderstood then. I thought it was MSFT partnering with Qualcomm to make them a CPU according to a list of design requirements MSFT had defined, including some native CPU-level design work from MSFT themselves.
- giaour 6y ago
  Microsoft collaborated, but the SQ series is an optimized Qualcomm Snapdragon variant: https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/what-is-the-microsoft-sq1-chip-surface-pro-xs-secret-explained/422607 https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/what-is-the-microsoft-...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
4778468d 6y ago
All these arm chips have some element closed, proprietary,secret, undocumented.

82 points by elsewhen 6y ago

I hope it's true but I also hope we don't end up with every company selling its own CPU that works only with their own software. Something like what we have now with x84/amd64 but with more companies on the game.

jdxcode 6y ago
That definitely looks like the direction we're headed. Hard to see exactly what Intel's business would be in such a world.
- trianglem 6y ago
  Get incorporated into one or more vertical chains and become a “fab” or have a massive architectural breakthrough that maintains the status quo.
Slikey 6y ago
In an ideal world that'd mean we become architecture agnostic and solutions should work on any CPU entering the market while ARM has still not achieved majority support on desktop solutions. Sadly I am certain there will be an extremely painful phase in which some software runs a lot better (more than the instruction set would explain) on some hardware and not on others. Driver support is going to be really poor and tech support will be a very secure job for the coming decade.. hah :)
giancarlostoro 6y ago
Well this is how ARM has always been though, you can license an ARM chip and produce your own. That's why you have ARM chips from different companies. The difference with Apple was they are a majority share holder so they probably were able to fully retain rights. Seeing how successful Apple has been with their own chips, I guess Microsoft's taken it as a green light. What's sad is Microsoft's been pushing towards ARM for what feels like forever but it hasn't been up to part with x86. If I can honestly buy a Surface Book with ARM and still get a beefy laptop for a fraction of the cost I will happily buy the most expensive model. I also kind of hope this inspires them to work on Windows Mobile again in the future. They just need it to not lag too far behind Windows 10's core, which I heard was an issue from Windows 7 Mobile to Windows 8 Mobile (there was 0 upgrade path / it was a mess to upgrade).
- jononor 6y ago
  Apple has never been a majority shareholder of ARM? I think the most they had was 20%, and that is many many years ago.
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    Pretty close - their initial investment seems to have been 30%. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-11-28-fi-4993-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-11-28-fi-4993-s... "Apple has invested about $3 million (roughly 1.5 million pounds) for a 30% interest in the company" Also from that link, this amusing sentence: "Some analysts speculated that Apple might be eyeing ARM chips for use in a future notebook-sized computer"
    - klelatti 6y ago
      It was actually 43% https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/09/how-arm-has-already-saved-apple---twice https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/09/how-arm-has-alrea...
      - zimpenfish 6y ago
        I can't find any contemporary reporting that says it was 43% - from what I can see, the first mention of 43% seems to come from this - https://www.cultofmac.com/97055/this-is-how-arm-saved-apple-from-going-bust-1990s/ https://www.cultofmac.com/97055/this-is-how-arm-saved-apple-... - which is bonkers wrong about the initial investment ($1.5b!). Do you have anything pre-dating this nonsense article which says it was 43%?
        klelatti 6y ago
        page 38 http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2015/04/102739951-05-01-acc.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/201... Edit: Ah I see Cult of Mac quoted Hauser. Well Hauser was a director of Acorn at the time. Also Robin Saxby talks about Apple and Acorn investing $1.5m and VLSI $250k so with some shares for staff that would be about 43%.
adamnemecek 6y ago
This might end up being a big boost for cross platform development.

neogodless 6y ago

Previous discussion on the original Bloomberg article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25472322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25472322

trzeci 6y ago

We've just started to clean the mess with browsers, where every browser made a custom custom extensions / API, and now we're entering a situation where every major player will create own CPU with special instructions, and that will cascade to compilers and ultimately to developers trying to provide cross platform apps.

8ytecoder 6y ago
That’s how the personal computer revolution started. In fact that’s why high level languages were invented. Competition is good. Intel has stagnated the CPU for over a decade now. In addition we have better and standard instruction sets. Compilers are way more competent as well. If this means faster and more processing power and capabilities we’ll do more than fine.
suyash 6y ago
Won't make much difference in the life of software developers targeting Mac or Windows, unlike browser technology, native app toolkit and languages, api's for these two OS is already unique.
alkonaut 6y ago
It’s coming full circle. The period when one company made a processor, a second made an OS, and a third made a compiler looks like it’s ending. Controlling everything from start to finish like Apple with swift, m1, MacOS can give you a several percent advantage just because of the synergies you can take advantage of.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  > Controlling everything from start to finish like Apple with swift, m1, MacOS can give you a several percent advantage just because of the synergies you can take advantage of. That's definitely true. Nevertheless, while Apple controls the whole chain for the iPhone, iPhones are not the most popular smartphones in the world. Depending on their use case, rational customers will buy not the best/most optimized, but the one that fits their needs at the lowest price.

tartaglia 6y ago

I’m optimistic about this. If you control everything within your product, then you’re able to fully take advantage of it.

prajwalshetty 6y ago

Getting the drivers to work was already a pain, well, this will make it worse it looks like.

mikece 6y ago

"May be?" Isn't the SQ1 their own in-house ARM design? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-pro-x/processor https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-pro...

wmf 6y ago
SQ1 appears to be designed by Qualcomm exclusively for Microsoft.
- mikece 6y ago
  I misunderstood then. I thought it was MSFT partnering with Qualcomm to make them a CPU according to a list of design requirements MSFT had defined, including some native CPU-level design work from MSFT themselves.
giaour 6y ago
Microsoft collaborated, but the SQ series is an optimized Qualcomm Snapdragon variant: https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/what-is-the-microsoft-sq1-chip-surface-pro-xs-secret-explained/422607 https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/what-is-the-microsoft-...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

4778468d 6y ago

All these arm chips have some element closed, proprietary,secret, undocumented.