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Microsoft confident Windows on Arm could beat Apple with Snapdragon X Elite

29 points by top_sigrid 3y ago

top_sigrid 3y ago
From the Article: "Microsoft is so confident in these new Qualcomm chips that it’s planning a number of demos that will show how these processors will be faster than an M3 MacBook Air for CPU tasks, AI acceleration, and even app emulation."
top_sigrid 3y ago
https://archive.ph/cay2p https://archive.ph/cay2p
retskrad 3y ago
It's great news to see competition to Macs. However, we need independent tests on it's efficiency. It doesn't matter if they're faster than Macs if they drain more battery. Also, at the end of the day, these chips will be inside Windows laptops. Windows OEM's ain't stealing Apple customers.
forrestthewoods 3y ago
> Microsoft claims, in internal documents seen by The Verge, that these new Windows AI PCs will have “faster app emulation than Rosetta 2” I'm deeply fascinated by this. Rosetta 2 is crazy impressive. If the Qualcomm/Windows works as well then a Windows ARM laptop could be genuinely interesting.
dmitrygr 3y ago
They are careful to promise better performance without mentioning battery life. And, separately, good battery life without mentioning performance. To me that creates the impression that they cannot do both. You’ll either have good perf but only for a few hours (then just get an AMD CPU), or good battery life but shitty perf (then just get a rockchip-based Chromebook) The reason everyone is in love with Apple silicon chips is that you get amazing perf and still get twenty hours of battery life.
- kiririn 3y ago
  x86 chips like 7840u can already trade blows with apple on efficiency under load, so I’d be surprised if this couldn’t. With some ‘little’ cores to break through the 3w idle floor of the AMD chip, I reckon the Snapdragon stands a chance. But it’s down to the OEMs to get idle power draw of everything else low and fit decent sized batteries
  - dagmx 3y ago
    The Snapdragon X is a homogeneous core makeup. Only large cores.
  - dmitrygr 3y ago
    If that is so, where are the x86 laptops with 20 hour battery lives with MacBook-like weights and thicknesses?
pjmlp 3y ago
Even so, the greatest issue is getting Windows developer community to actually care to provide ARM binaries, which has been the main pain point from previous Windows on ARM hardware attempts. Managed languages will do just fine, their dependencies on native libraries, or typical compiled applications and libraries not so much. Breaking compatibility on Windows has always ended up badly for Microsoft, as it goes against the culture they themselves created on the PC. So it remains to be seen how much will keep running under emulation.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  Not necessarily even for managed languages. Sure, you can in theory just package an ARM runtime, but the devil is in the details. For example, it's typical that packaging tools only build packages for the platform they run on. So if you run the tool on Windows Intel, you get packages for Windows Intel. Want ARM? You need to run it on Windows ARM. Don't have such a machine? Tough cookies. This is one of the problems that motivated me to write Hydraulic Conveyor, and so it can build packages for every platform portably including Windows Intel and ARM regardless of what OS or CPU you run it on. It knows how to download all the different runtimes for all the different OS/CPU combinations and make and sign all the packages in parallel, without any native tooling. It knows how to strip out native binaries that appear in managed dependencies, but don't match the target. It makes download pages that detect what CPU you have (on Chrome, Safari lies unfortunately), or for Windows an installer that detects the user's CPU and downloads/installs the right arch for the user. So it handles all these details and lets you release for hardware you don't have. But that's a fairly unique party trick. For every other system you're going to be reliant on multi-platform CI, which may or may not support every target (ARM Macs took a long time to come to GitHub Actions), and in which adding extra platforms increases the cost of every build - sometimes by a lot! Apple relied not only on Rosetta but also their whole fat binary infrastructure, and they have sticks like notarization and carrots like the App Store to encourage devs to do the work. Also Mac apps tend to be well maintained and gaming is not so common. MS don't have the same advantages, so apps will presumably be running in emulation for a lot longer and have more compatibility warts.
  - moondev 3y ago
bevekspldnw 3y ago
And I’m confident I don’t want to use an operating system that forces me to disclose my email address to use the damn computer. I just bought a Microsoft branded laptop and to my horror it wouldn’t let me even create a local account without giving it an email. I gave it a fake one and now it pesters me every couple minutes to validate it.
- wannacboatmovie 3y ago
  This isn't a real world problem when 5 seconds of Googling is all that is needed to bypass it. FWIW, I installed Linux two days ago and could not decrypt the root volume because of a bug that doesn't load the keyboard driver early enough in the boot process to let you actually type in the password. So you're stuck with a blinking cursor asking for your password and no keyboard input. That's a real problem and why people come crawling back to Windows.
  - brokenmachine 3y ago
    I've never had that problem on Linux. What distro? Is it a known issue?
    - bevekspldnw 3y ago
      I’m gonna guess operator error on this one.
      - wannacboatmovie 3y ago
        Well you guessed wrong. The amount of denial around Linux's abhorrent UX in 2024 is staggering. There are mailing list reports dating back a few years with many other users experiencing the same issue, the going theory is a bug in GRUB's USB keyboard drivers. No one has any idea why or how to fix it. GP is complaining about having to supply an email address and the alternative is a system that in some cases is literally unbootable after a fresh install. But it's local accounts only so it's all good.
sylens 3y ago
Even if they were to match Apple Silicon pound-for-pound, they've been horrible stewards of the Windows OS in terms of nagware, bloat, and user hostile behavior (the default browser nonsense). If they actually made an operating system that respected their users, I'd be more inclined to take a serious look at these devices.
freeone3000 3y ago
I’m excited about the Windows release bringing standardization and solid hardware in this area. Apple Silicon is locked down, so having a traditional bootloader (which Windows Boot is) on ARM will be great for linux adoption in this space — which is really what I see for these devices going forward.
- angulardragon03 3y ago
  I’m super confused - Microsoft has tried this both in 2012 and 2016 (with Surface RT, and then again with Windows 10 on ARM). Neither of these turned out to be great for Linux adoption in this space (to my knowledge) - what leads you to believe that this time will be different?
  - freeone3000 3y ago
    The laptops are not planned to be bad. They’re taking aim at Macbook Pros, which means actually decent build quality, significant power, and not the same lockdown restrictions.
blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
I’ve had issues on Windows 10 recently with windows updates not installing properly. After lots of research in their forums I found that I have to run scripts people have come up with to fix the issue, which just does not seem trustworthy or user friendly. I have just let these updates repeatedly fail because I am worried about messing up my installed OS somehow. On top of this drop in quality, I’ve seen more and more anti-competitive / dark pattern behavior with notifications and pop ups trying to push me towards Microsoft software and services. I feel like Microsoft is violating what a general purpose computer is supposed to be. Are newer Windows versions any better about software quality or these dark patterns? Given that MacOS already is free of such nagging and is already great functionally (like on battery life and performance), I am not sure what motivation there is (other than price?) to take a chance on future Snapdragon Elite laptops.
- 486sx33 3y ago
  HP printer manager randomly installed for you too ?
  - blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
    I’ve been burned by HP in the past. But no, the issue I have (I think) is that some windows update will only work if the recovery partition is resized to give the update enough space, and windows update cannot perform partition changes automatically. Unfortunately it is tied to this serious Bitlocker bypass vulnerability: https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2024-20666 https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-20...
throwaway5959 3y ago
It's not the hardware that's the problem.
nerdjon 3y ago
It’s honestly meaningless until the entire Windows market moves over, which I doubt gaming will anytime soon. Apples transition worked since they could force it. Developers targeting Mac users had to work on Arm optimized versions or be stuck working through Rosetta. But if this doesn’t sell well enough for developers to care, why would you buy a device that only runs software through emulation.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
  Valve will have to if they want to keep Apple. And I imagine an arm steam deck is a pretty tantalizing product they'd love to make
  - Novosell 3y ago
    MacOS makes up 1.38% of all Steam users, so I don't think Valve cares one bit. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
    - ianschmitz 3y ago
      1.38% of $10B is a lot of money. I’m not saying they care though.
  - NekkoDroid 3y ago
    I am p sure Valve couldn't care less about Apple. They care about Linux because they aren't at the whims of a corporate entity, which is even worse with Apple than with Microsoft.
  - Terretta 3y ago
    You can't install ARM native MacOS games via Steam without Rosetta because of Steam. It's tedious, and suggests they aren't interested in "keeping Apple".
  - nerdjon 3y ago
    I love my Mac and I constantly wish that it could be my gaming PC. But Valve could ditch Mac and it would barely be noticeable. Plus apple showed off tech similar to proton for Mac last year. An ARM steam deck sounds interesting, but it would likely have to be after enough of the gaming market moved over.
Chazprime 3y ago
Are they magically reverting to Windows NT 4.0 for this build?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
486sx33 3y ago
“ including an AI Explorer app that lets you “retrieve anything you’ve ever seen or done on your device.” Barf
snvzz 3y ago
ARM won't. RISC-V, perhaps.

29 points by top_sigrid 3y ago

From the Article: "Microsoft is so confident in these new Qualcomm chips that it’s planning a number of demos that will show how these processors will be faster than an M3 MacBook Air for CPU tasks, AI acceleration, and even app emulation."

top_sigrid 3y ago

https://archive.ph/cay2p https://archive.ph/cay2p

retskrad 3y ago

It's great news to see competition to Macs. However, we need independent tests on it's efficiency. It doesn't matter if they're faster than Macs if they drain more battery. Also, at the end of the day, these chips will be inside Windows laptops. Windows OEM's ain't stealing Apple customers.

forrestthewoods 3y ago

> Microsoft claims, in internal documents seen by The Verge, that these new Windows AI PCs will have “faster app emulation than Rosetta 2” I'm deeply fascinated by this. Rosetta 2 is crazy impressive. If the Qualcomm/Windows works as well then a Windows ARM laptop could be genuinely interesting.

dmitrygr 3y ago

They are careful to promise better performance without mentioning battery life. And, separately, good battery life without mentioning performance. To me that creates the impression that they cannot do both. You’ll either have good perf but only for a few hours (then just get an AMD CPU), or good battery life but shitty perf (then just get a rockchip-based Chromebook) The reason everyone is in love with Apple silicon chips is that you get amazing perf and still get twenty hours of battery life.

kiririn 3y ago
x86 chips like 7840u can already trade blows with apple on efficiency under load, so I’d be surprised if this couldn’t. With some ‘little’ cores to break through the 3w idle floor of the AMD chip, I reckon the Snapdragon stands a chance. But it’s down to the OEMs to get idle power draw of everything else low and fit decent sized batteries
- dagmx 3y ago
  The Snapdragon X is a homogeneous core makeup. Only large cores.
- dmitrygr 3y ago
  If that is so, where are the x86 laptops with 20 hour battery lives with MacBook-like weights and thicknesses?

pjmlp 3y ago

Even so, the greatest issue is getting Windows developer community to actually care to provide ARM binaries, which has been the main pain point from previous Windows on ARM hardware attempts. Managed languages will do just fine, their dependencies on native libraries, or typical compiled applications and libraries not so much. Breaking compatibility on Windows has always ended up badly for Microsoft, as it goes against the culture they themselves created on the PC. So it remains to be seen how much will keep running under emulation.

mike_hearn 3y ago
Not necessarily even for managed languages. Sure, you can in theory just package an ARM runtime, but the devil is in the details. For example, it's typical that packaging tools only build packages for the platform they run on. So if you run the tool on Windows Intel, you get packages for Windows Intel. Want ARM? You need to run it on Windows ARM. Don't have such a machine? Tough cookies. This is one of the problems that motivated me to write Hydraulic Conveyor, and so it can build packages for every platform portably including Windows Intel and ARM regardless of what OS or CPU you run it on. It knows how to download all the different runtimes for all the different OS/CPU combinations and make and sign all the packages in parallel, without any native tooling. It knows how to strip out native binaries that appear in managed dependencies, but don't match the target. It makes download pages that detect what CPU you have (on Chrome, Safari lies unfortunately), or for Windows an installer that detects the user's CPU and downloads/installs the right arch for the user. So it handles all these details and lets you release for hardware you don't have. But that's a fairly unique party trick. For every other system you're going to be reliant on multi-platform CI, which may or may not support every target (ARM Macs took a long time to come to GitHub Actions), and in which adding extra platforms increases the cost of every build - sometimes by a lot! Apple relied not only on Rosetta but also their whole fat binary infrastructure, and they have sticks like notarization and carrots like the App Store to encourage devs to do the work. Also Mac apps tend to be well maintained and gaming is not so common. MS don't have the same advantages, so apps will presumably be running in emulation for a lot longer and have more compatibility warts.
- moondev 3y ago

bevekspldnw 3y ago

And I’m confident I don’t want to use an operating system that forces me to disclose my email address to use the damn computer. I just bought a Microsoft branded laptop and to my horror it wouldn’t let me even create a local account without giving it an email. I gave it a fake one and now it pesters me every couple minutes to validate it.

wannacboatmovie 3y ago
This isn't a real world problem when 5 seconds of Googling is all that is needed to bypass it. FWIW, I installed Linux two days ago and could not decrypt the root volume because of a bug that doesn't load the keyboard driver early enough in the boot process to let you actually type in the password. So you're stuck with a blinking cursor asking for your password and no keyboard input. That's a real problem and why people come crawling back to Windows.
- brokenmachine 3y ago
  I've never had that problem on Linux. What distro? Is it a known issue?
  - bevekspldnw 3y ago
    I’m gonna guess operator error on this one.
    - wannacboatmovie 3y ago
      Well you guessed wrong. The amount of denial around Linux's abhorrent UX in 2024 is staggering. There are mailing list reports dating back a few years with many other users experiencing the same issue, the going theory is a bug in GRUB's USB keyboard drivers. No one has any idea why or how to fix it. GP is complaining about having to supply an email address and the alternative is a system that in some cases is literally unbootable after a fresh install. But it's local accounts only so it's all good.

sylens 3y ago

Even if they were to match Apple Silicon pound-for-pound, they've been horrible stewards of the Windows OS in terms of nagware, bloat, and user hostile behavior (the default browser nonsense). If they actually made an operating system that respected their users, I'd be more inclined to take a serious look at these devices.

freeone3000 3y ago

I’m excited about the Windows release bringing standardization and solid hardware in this area. Apple Silicon is locked down, so having a traditional bootloader (which Windows Boot is) on ARM will be great for linux adoption in this space — which is really what I see for these devices going forward.

angulardragon03 3y ago
I’m super confused - Microsoft has tried this both in 2012 and 2016 (with Surface RT, and then again with Windows 10 on ARM). Neither of these turned out to be great for Linux adoption in this space (to my knowledge) - what leads you to believe that this time will be different?
- freeone3000 3y ago
  The laptops are not planned to be bad. They’re taking aim at Macbook Pros, which means actually decent build quality, significant power, and not the same lockdown restrictions.

blackeyeblitzar 3y ago

I’ve had issues on Windows 10 recently with windows updates not installing properly. After lots of research in their forums I found that I have to run scripts people have come up with to fix the issue, which just does not seem trustworthy or user friendly. I have just let these updates repeatedly fail because I am worried about messing up my installed OS somehow. On top of this drop in quality, I’ve seen more and more anti-competitive / dark pattern behavior with notifications and pop ups trying to push me towards Microsoft software and services. I feel like Microsoft is violating what a general purpose computer is supposed to be. Are newer Windows versions any better about software quality or these dark patterns? Given that MacOS already is free of such nagging and is already great functionally (like on battery life and performance), I am not sure what motivation there is (other than price?) to take a chance on future Snapdragon Elite laptops.

486sx33 3y ago
HP printer manager randomly installed for you too ?
- blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
  I’ve been burned by HP in the past. But no, the issue I have (I think) is that some windows update will only work if the recovery partition is resized to give the update enough space, and windows update cannot perform partition changes automatically. Unfortunately it is tied to this serious Bitlocker bypass vulnerability: https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2024-20666 https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-20...

throwaway5959 3y ago

It's not the hardware that's the problem.

nerdjon 3y ago

It’s honestly meaningless until the entire Windows market moves over, which I doubt gaming will anytime soon. Apples transition worked since they could force it. Developers targeting Mac users had to work on Arm optimized versions or be stuck working through Rosetta. But if this doesn’t sell well enough for developers to care, why would you buy a device that only runs software through emulation.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
Valve will have to if they want to keep Apple. And I imagine an arm steam deck is a pretty tantalizing product they'd love to make
- Novosell 3y ago
  MacOS makes up 1.38% of all Steam users, so I don't think Valve cares one bit. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
  - ianschmitz 3y ago
    1.38% of $10B is a lot of money. I’m not saying they care though.
- NekkoDroid 3y ago
  I am p sure Valve couldn't care less about Apple. They care about Linux because they aren't at the whims of a corporate entity, which is even worse with Apple than with Microsoft.
- Terretta 3y ago
  You can't install ARM native MacOS games via Steam without Rosetta because of Steam. It's tedious, and suggests they aren't interested in "keeping Apple".
- nerdjon 3y ago
  I love my Mac and I constantly wish that it could be my gaming PC. But Valve could ditch Mac and it would barely be noticeable. Plus apple showed off tech similar to proton for Mac last year. An ARM steam deck sounds interesting, but it would likely have to be after enough of the gaming market moved over.

Chazprime 3y ago

Are they magically reverting to Windows NT 4.0 for this build?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

486sx33 3y ago

“ including an AI Explorer app that lets you “retrieve anything you’ve ever seen or done on your device.” Barf

snvzz 3y ago

ARM won't. RISC-V, perhaps.