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If feel like at this point, Windows is eventually going to switch to ARM it's just a matter of overcoming a lot inertia. ARM and RISC processors in general are

If feel like at this point, Windows is eventually going to switch to ARM it's just a matter of overcoming a lot inertia. ARM and RISC processors in general are now proven to be better than x86. If Microsoft invests in making Windows for ARM run well and provides a translation tool like Rosetta, it's game over for x86. That's no easy feat but at a fundamental level I don't really see a way for x86 to become actually competitive again against RISC processors.

Octoth0rpe 4y ago
> ARM and RISC processors in general are now proven to be better than x86. Certain ARM implementations (M1, M2) have proven better than certain implementations of x86 (basically all of them). The ARM implementations in question are not available for general purchase. It's only worth the effort to switch if a competitive processor becomes available. It doesn't look like the MS teamup with qualcomm that resulted in the sq1/sq2 procs are that. In the server space, that's different given that graviton/cavium have proven competitive.
- soco 4y ago
  Cavium has been proven competitive then killed. Something didn't add up there, but at least we have the Ampere processors left.
Rhedox 4y ago
> and provides a translation tool like Rosetta They already have that.
hnov 4y ago
The original Surface from 2012 was the first mainstream ARM Windows device.
- philistine 4y ago
  I had a friend studying law buy one of those. She quickly demurred and switched to a laptop, even her workload was too much for the device.
  - dboreham 4y ago
    Present day ARM Surface devices (well...device) are very fast.
cossatot 4y ago
For those of us whose CS background doesn't go this deep, what about ARM makes it more performant than x86? Is it something at a theoretical level, or does it have to do with CPU manufacturing constraints/tradeoffs, or a simpler/more efficient instruction set?
- fbanon 4y ago
  >For those of us whose CS background doesn't go this deep, what about ARM makes it more performant than x86? It is more performant because the silicon is made by a company that didn't botch their last process node.
- bri3d 4y ago
  The surface-level argument is that the instruction set is simpler and more efficient. Certainly the floor for the complexity and size of an ARM processor is lower than for x86 - the ISA is smaller, easier to decode, and suffers from fewer silly legacy baggage items. However, the reality is that all modern out-of-order microarchitectures are fiendishly complex and that at the "top of the game," implementation details at every level of implementation matter more than the fundamental ISA at play. With x86 there's a certain die size and complexity "tax" in terms of instruction decoding and support that majorly affects small designs. For example, an x86 microcontroller would be a bad idea compared to an ARM one, full stop. But, once you've paid that top-line x86 tax and you're building a huge out-of-order microarchitecture, the differences are minimal and how well you build the rest of the CPU's machinery matters much more than the ISA you started with.
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    For the most part, yes. One difference is having constant instruction length, which allows highly parallel decoding and a wider machine in general. This is part of what makes Apple's CPUs faster and cannot be replicated by x86-64, ARM32 or RISC-V with compressed instructions.
- 58028641 4y ago
  One of the factors is that all ARM64 instructions are the same length which makes decoding simpler.
Arcuru 4y ago
Microsoft has shipped devices that run ARM for many years (10?), and include translation software to run x86 applications transparently. They are hindered by two things though: 1. They have been locked into using chips from Qualcomm, which are just slower than Apple's ARM designs. 2. Qualcomm has not implemented the hardware necessary to speed up the x86 translation. The basic problem with running x86 applications on ARM is handling differences in the memory model (x86 uses a strong memory model, ARM uses a weak one). This is slow to handle in software, but IIUC Apple customized their hardware to speed up that operation, which puts them in a much better place for emulating x86.
kllrnohj 4y ago
No, it's a matter of someone making an ARM CPU that's worth using in a laptop/desktop. So far only Apple has, and they aren't sharing. The broader ARM market is still pretty weak & broadly uncompetitive with current x86 CPUs. In the server side of things there's Neoverse, graviton, etc.. which might have "trickle-down" effects but since it's primarily focused on just having more cores rather than faster cores that seems unlikely. And that also hasn't "proven to be better than x86" either, Epyc is a beast and AMD doesn't seem to be slowing down or hitting any limits in scaling up.

Octoth0rpe 4y ago

> ARM and RISC processors in general are now proven to be better than x86. Certain ARM implementations (M1, M2) have proven better than certain implementations of x86 (basically all of them). The ARM implementations in question are not available for general purchase. It's only worth the effort to switch if a competitive processor becomes available. It doesn't look like the MS teamup with qualcomm that resulted in the sq1/sq2 procs are that. In the server space, that's different given that graviton/cavium have proven competitive.

soco 4y ago
Cavium has been proven competitive then killed. Something didn't add up there, but at least we have the Ampere processors left.

Rhedox 4y ago

> and provides a translation tool like Rosetta They already have that.

hnov 4y ago

The original Surface from 2012 was the first mainstream ARM Windows device.

philistine 4y ago
I had a friend studying law buy one of those. She quickly demurred and switched to a laptop, even her workload was too much for the device.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Present day ARM Surface devices (well...device) are very fast.

cossatot 4y ago

For those of us whose CS background doesn't go this deep, what about ARM makes it more performant than x86? Is it something at a theoretical level, or does it have to do with CPU manufacturing constraints/tradeoffs, or a simpler/more efficient instruction set?

fbanon 4y ago
>For those of us whose CS background doesn't go this deep, what about ARM makes it more performant than x86? It is more performant because the silicon is made by a company that didn't botch their last process node.
bri3d 4y ago
The surface-level argument is that the instruction set is simpler and more efficient. Certainly the floor for the complexity and size of an ARM processor is lower than for x86 - the ISA is smaller, easier to decode, and suffers from fewer silly legacy baggage items. However, the reality is that all modern out-of-order microarchitectures are fiendishly complex and that at the "top of the game," implementation details at every level of implementation matter more than the fundamental ISA at play. With x86 there's a certain die size and complexity "tax" in terms of instruction decoding and support that majorly affects small designs. For example, an x86 microcontroller would be a bad idea compared to an ARM one, full stop. But, once you've paid that top-line x86 tax and you're building a huge out-of-order microarchitecture, the differences are minimal and how well you build the rest of the CPU's machinery matters much more than the ISA you started with.
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  For the most part, yes. One difference is having constant instruction length, which allows highly parallel decoding and a wider machine in general. This is part of what makes Apple's CPUs faster and cannot be replicated by x86-64, ARM32 or RISC-V with compressed instructions.
58028641 4y ago
One of the factors is that all ARM64 instructions are the same length which makes decoding simpler.

Arcuru 4y ago

Microsoft has shipped devices that run ARM for many years (10?), and include translation software to run x86 applications transparently. They are hindered by two things though: 1. They have been locked into using chips from Qualcomm, which are just slower than Apple's ARM designs. 2. Qualcomm has not implemented the hardware necessary to speed up the x86 translation. The basic problem with running x86 applications on ARM is handling differences in the memory model (x86 uses a strong memory model, ARM uses a weak one). This is slow to handle in software, but IIUC Apple customized their hardware to speed up that operation, which puts them in a much better place for emulating x86.

kllrnohj 4y ago

No, it's a matter of someone making an ARM CPU that's worth using in a laptop/desktop. So far only Apple has, and they aren't sharing. The broader ARM market is still pretty weak & broadly uncompetitive with current x86 CPUs. In the server side of things there's Neoverse, graviton, etc.. which might have "trickle-down" effects but since it's primarily focused on just having more cores rather than faster cores that seems unlikely. And that also hasn't "proven to be better than x86" either, Epyc is a beast and AMD doesn't seem to be slowing down or hitting any limits in scaling up.