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Windows ARM Dev Kit 2023
- edude03 3y agoI'm not sure of the significance of this; is this an updated version of the project Volterra box from before?
- officeplant 3y agoNo this is still the same one that came out in 2023. Not sure why this is posted either.
- altairprime 3y agoPreviously on HN (542 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33319535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33319535
- InvaderFizz 3y agoThis box was interesting when first released, but Linux still is not in a usable state on it after six months. If this could be a solid docker host, it would be a really interesting home server. It still cannot six months later and instead I am building a home K8s cluster with Dell Micro 3060s with i5-8500t CPUs. My per unit cost with 64GB RAM, 1TB NVME, and 2.5Gbe is under $310.
- notaplumber1 3y agoWon't help you with Docker containers, but OpenBSD/arm64 will run OOTB on the MS Dev Kit, NVMe works, USB-3 works, 2.5Gbe Realtek NIC is supported by the ure(4) driver. The ath11k wireless is not supported though, so you'll need a USB adapter for that unfortunately. If you're looking for a free Unix-y environment to play with, with >11000 binaries packages available. You need to use the mini-DisplayPort for video output, not Type-C. This is a UEFI limitation on the machine.
- wmf 3y agoA Windows dev kit isn't useful as a Linux server? Tell me more.
- snvzz 3y agoI believe their post said enough already. The hardware is simply not competitive at the price, even if you ignore the hassles of hardware support.
- rektide 3y agoIt's wild that decades latter ARM still is so incredibly fantastically far behind x86 in building generic systems one can install a mainline Linux on. 99% of their uses are for appliances/phones, so it makes sense that they're still totally immature at being a computer. But weighed against how much time arm has had to try to improve their world, looking at how plodding progress has been, how broadly chaotic & grossly inconsistent the ecosystem is, it's still a stunning testament. Computing in general could have been this bad. It's such a miracle we got the PC. The Gang of Nine just wanted to sell hardware but they launched a major Democratizing phase change, one we still have yet to see reproduced.
- MBCook 3y agoYeah. MS basically forced PC hardware configuration standardization through popularity. Everyone wanted DOS, then Windows. So if the computer didn’t follow the standard spec for hardware design/discovery no one would buy it. That hasn’t existed in ARM land. Seems to be the wild west in comparison. So every board requires custom bring-up.
- rektide 3y agoI'm not sure how willing I am to peg the PC platform to Microsoft. Just looking at the 1980's there were tons of operating systems being created & getting used. That there could be so many OSes was part & parcel to it suddenly being possible to create so much hardware. I see this as a time of diversification & enablement, a great opportunity, that yes, latter Microsoft did emerge top of the heap on. But they were more incidental a player than anything else, in my mind; they rode the wave that was happening. And they contributed very little. DOS with TSR driver stuff wasn't exactly a place for cooperation; it too was wild west.
- MBCook 3y agoThey walked into the right place at the right time, and knew how to play that advantage. They didn’t cause it initially, but they sure took advantage of being the thing IBM chose.
- rcarmo 3y agoYou can run WSL on it, and auto-start it (and containers) upon boot, plus Remote Desktop to it for interactive maintenance (and yes, you can also go out and grab a new Intel N100 miniPC and kit it out to similar specs and have much less power draw than your i5 config, which I think will be cheaper in the long run and actually faster…).
- InvaderFizz 3y agoAssuming an average draw of 30 watts for the i5-8500t system (it will be mostly idle, so way less). With my $0.11/kWh electricity, I'm looking at $2.37/month in costs to run a node. Even assuming the electricity was free for the Arm box, that's 10 years to make up the difference. I highly doubt these machines will be in use in 10 years. The N100 is interesting, but it's capped at 16GB RAM by Intel.
- snvzz 3y agoI'll wait for the RISC-V version of the SDK. I see no future where Windows for ARM meets ample success. We know there's a Windows for RISC-V in the works, as the foundation's talks at the Summit referenced it multiple times. ARM-based, hardware-wise, there's only Qualcomm-based laptops. Qualcomm is very obviously not going to be making SoCs based on ARM CPUs for long. They have been RISC-V members for a while, they are being sued by ARM, and they've clearly expressed their intent re: RISC-V in their talks at the RISC-V Summit. As for other SoC vendors, I doubt there is interest. Not now that RISC-V is already taking off.
- nebula8804 3y agoHow about Windows running on M Series Macs? That would probably be one of the best Windows machines on the market. Risc-V while a noble idea will initially lead to some really junk laptops just like the wave of Chinese ARM "laptops" from a few years back and more recently the junk from Qualcomm. Eventually I image the experience will get decent but there will be nothing but disposable junk for a few years until the ecosystem and performance become something consumers can use.
- snvzz 3y agoI don't think Microsoft is interested, and I honestly do not care about ARM hardware anymore. I have never cared about Apple hardware to begin with.
- nebula8804 3y agoI guess the mass market won't care about whatever you end up caring about. You are missing out if you haven't given a serious try of Apple M-Series hardware.
- snvzz 3y agoLet me know once Microsoft supports Windows for ARM on M-Series. Till then, it does not exist for Windows purposes.
- MBCook 3y agoIt’s good this exists, but I don’t know how Windows ever gets past the chicken and egg problem. If you don’t care about Windows software, Chromebooks are popular and cheap. They don’t have much in the way of security issues, don’t need much management, and store your setup in the cloud. If you care about the software you probably don’t want ARM. The translation layer is supposed to be quite noticeable unlike Rosetta 1 & 2 on Macs. And PCs no longer start at $750 so ARM can’t undercut by much. I’ve seen sub-$200 PC laptops. Sure they’re garbage but PCs are at basically every price point now. Apple had it easy. “Our processors are way better than our old ones, we’re doing this, enjoy or leave.” MS doesn’t have the kind of position to force this. So why would the market move?
- dmonitor 3y agoYeah, when Windows moves to ARM they lose all their legacy software support, which is legitimately the one of only reasons people use Windows in the first place.
- snvzz 3y agoWhile I doubt ARM port will go anywhere (RISC-V is where it's at), they have x86 emulation support in place, to run legacy binaries.
- vardump 3y agoWindows ARM64 runs x86 binaries pretty well. Well enough that it doesn't matter that much you don't have a native Google Chrome, for instance. AMD64/x86-64 version runs just fine.
- klondike_ 3y agoMicrosoft doesn't want to be beholden to the Intel-AMD duopoly. By threatening them with ARM Windows, they force Intel and AMD to improve their low power offerings and to lower prices, even if ARM Windows never sees mass market adoption
- pjmlp 3y agoChromebooks are only popular on US school system, and bloodly expensive for what is a Chrome jungling OS constrained by what Web APIs are able to expose from modern computer hardware.
- bbbbzzz1 3y agoI would be interested in this but I recall a video comparing it to the m1 Mac mini and it's just not even close. I've enjoyed using visual studio for c/c++/c# but for usescases outside of that, I feel like the developer experience on Linux or Mac is better
- DeepYogurt 3y agoAre these the nuvia cores or still the last gen qualcomm design?
- wmf 3y agoIt's still Cortex-X1.
- rcarmo 3y agoSadly, not available in my country (again).