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Not quite. Hidden at the very end of Microsoft's blognouncement[1] is this tidbit (emphasis mine): > We look forward to expanding through deep partnerships wit

Not quite. Hidden at the very end of Microsoft's blognouncement[1] is this tidbit (emphasis mine): > We look forward to expanding through deep partnerships with Intel and AMD, starting with Lunar Lake and Strix. We will bring new Copilot+ PC experiences at a later date. So it's less Microsoft pivoting to and giving ARM a try again but rather testing the waters and distributing the risks by introducing ARM into a line of laptops and tablets that will still be fundamentally x86. Arguably, the only reason ARM is first to store shelves is because Qualcomm released this generation first before Intel and AMD. This isn't as significant as Apple throwing Intel out to pasture and converting to ARM wholesale, not yet anyway. [1]: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/05/20/introducing-copilot-pcs/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/05/20/introducing-copi...

genewitch 2y ago
apple never wanted to use intel hardware, they were forced to by motorola/IBM et al; whoever was selling them the PowerPC chips told them to pound sand because the xbox and playstation needed way more PPC chips than apple. Apple made a business decision to switch to intel, which caused a bit of a to-do in the community at the time. That apple switched off intel at their earliest possible chance - that which took time to "design" their own ARM cpu - doesn't really mean anything, in my opinion. I wonder how many people remember all of the hardware platforms that NT 3.51 and NT 4 ran on (Sparc, etc)
- cyberax 2y ago
  IBM didn't want to design a power-efficient PowerPC chip. And then they switched from Intel once Intel stopped being able to design new power-efficient chips.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    Well, that's not what the story was at the time. "You don't order enough" was the reasoning. Further, nearly contemporaneously after apple M chips debuted intel released chips with P and E cores. Furthermore, Intel made lots of chips that have TDP under 10W, even 5W - multicore, even. I still use them to run HA VMs for emergency communications internet gateways. "power-efficient" is a weird thing to claim, anyhow. What does it mean? PPC were much faster per socket than maybe even server class chips by intel, if you wanted power efficiency you could run them slower and get whatever FLOPS/J intel could give. I am very sure i remember Apple not having a choice.
    - cyberax 2y ago
      > "power-efficient" is a weird thing to claim, anyhow. What does it mean? Cycles per Joule, or cycles per second per watt. While staying at the laptop-level available power envelope. > PPC were much faster per socket than maybe even server class chips by intel The absolutely top POWER chips were at the time _somewhat_ superior to Intel (and AMD), but not by much. And that superiority was achieved by raw strength, the POWER chips had a very large die with tons of additional cache, and ran at higher frequencies (i.e. more power dissipation). However, laptop-class chips were absolutely underpowered. Intel ran circles around them. The same was true for consoles, PS3 had a puny underpowered CPU (with multiple co-processors that were supposed to make parallel tasks easier), and XBox360 was barely better than then current top desktop CPUs.
      - genewitch 2y ago
        > The relationship between Apple and IBM has been rocky at times. Apple openly criticized IBM for chip delivery problems, though Big Blue said it fixed the issue. More recent concerns, which helped spur the Intel deal, included tension between Apple's desire for a wide variety of PowerPC processors and IBM's concerns about the profitability of a low-volume business, according to one source familiar with the partnership. >IBM loses cachet with the end of the Apple partnership, but it can take consolation in that it's designing and manufacturing the Power family processors for future gaming consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Ninendo, said Clay Ryder, a Sageza Group analyst. "I would think in the sheer volume, all the stuff they're doing with the game consoles would be bigger. But anytime you lose a high-profile customer, that hurts in ways that are not quantifiable but that still hurt," Ryder said. furthermore, if you look past the "Intel is just too slow for the power envelope" that you stated: >The "bad quality assurance of Skylake" was responsible for Apple finally making the decision to ditch Intel and focus on its own ARM-based processors for high-performance machines. That's the claim made by outspoken former Intel principal engineer, François Piednoël. "For me this is the inflection point," says Piednoël. "This is where the Apple guys who were always contemplating to switch, they went and looked at it and said: 'Well, we've probably got to do it.' Basically the bad quality assurance of Skylake is responsible for them to actually go away from the platform." So both of the claims about cycles/J being the reason are just sound bite ahistoria. >The PowerXCell 8i powered super computers also dominated all of the top 6 "greenest" systems in the Green500 list, with highest MFLOPS/Watt ratio supercomputers in the world. that's 2008 - when apple originally announced they'd complete the move to intel. PS3 underpowered? >According to Folding@Home in a statement on its website; “Using the Cell processor of the PS3, we should be able to do more folding than what one could do on a PC. Also, since the PS3 has a powerful GPU, the PS3 client will offer real time visualization for the first time. Also if you compare like for like, the CPUs IBM put out in 2005 with 3.2ghz had a TDP of 75W. Intel CPUs in 2005 at 3.2GHZ used 130W TDP. both used 90nm processes. You're fractally wrong. I could actually keep going with every claim you made and put paragraphs in. I'm sorry.
macintux 2y ago
Microsoft has no courage. They have to keep catering to every possible audience, so they’re not willing to pull the plug on x86, which means ARM will always play second fiddle.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  Microsoft and Windows (and by extension x86) achieved their desktop market dominance by respecting that most people want backwards compatibility. Everything that has tried to go or is going against that tide either failed (eg: Itanium, Windows RT) or never had market share to lose in the first place (eg: MacOS, Linux in the consumer space). Microsoft would be stupid to be "courageous" and drop backwards compatibility, that would even trump Apple's courage abandoning the headphone jack. It also makes business sense to keep your eggs in multiple baskets, assuming those baskets are each commercially viable.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  > Microsoft has no courage Sadly the headphone jack is definitely dead. > They have to keep catering to every possible audience That's not Microsoft's job at this point, they heavily invest and push the envelop where makers don't want to take the risk, but from there it's for Lenovo, Dell, HP, Asus etc. to decide what they want to market and which chip to push. The same way some of them put weight behind AMD while other went full Intel 100% of the time.
rcarmo 2y ago
I don't think the Intel or AMD chips will be (literally) as cool. AMD mini-PCs are _close_ to what an M1 can do, but still too power-hungry and slow.

genewitch 2y ago

apple never wanted to use intel hardware, they were forced to by motorola/IBM et al; whoever was selling them the PowerPC chips told them to pound sand because the xbox and playstation needed way more PPC chips than apple. Apple made a business decision to switch to intel, which caused a bit of a to-do in the community at the time. That apple switched off intel at their earliest possible chance - that which took time to "design" their own ARM cpu - doesn't really mean anything, in my opinion. I wonder how many people remember all of the hardware platforms that NT 3.51 and NT 4 ran on (Sparc, etc)

cyberax 2y ago
IBM didn't want to design a power-efficient PowerPC chip. And then they switched from Intel once Intel stopped being able to design new power-efficient chips.
- genewitch 2y ago
  Well, that's not what the story was at the time. "You don't order enough" was the reasoning. Further, nearly contemporaneously after apple M chips debuted intel released chips with P and E cores. Furthermore, Intel made lots of chips that have TDP under 10W, even 5W - multicore, even. I still use them to run HA VMs for emergency communications internet gateways. "power-efficient" is a weird thing to claim, anyhow. What does it mean? PPC were much faster per socket than maybe even server class chips by intel, if you wanted power efficiency you could run them slower and get whatever FLOPS/J intel could give. I am very sure i remember Apple not having a choice.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    > "power-efficient" is a weird thing to claim, anyhow. What does it mean? Cycles per Joule, or cycles per second per watt. While staying at the laptop-level available power envelope. > PPC were much faster per socket than maybe even server class chips by intel The absolutely top POWER chips were at the time _somewhat_ superior to Intel (and AMD), but not by much. And that superiority was achieved by raw strength, the POWER chips had a very large die with tons of additional cache, and ran at higher frequencies (i.e. more power dissipation). However, laptop-class chips were absolutely underpowered. Intel ran circles around them. The same was true for consoles, PS3 had a puny underpowered CPU (with multiple co-processors that were supposed to make parallel tasks easier), and XBox360 was barely better than then current top desktop CPUs.
    - genewitch 2y ago
      > The relationship between Apple and IBM has been rocky at times. Apple openly criticized IBM for chip delivery problems, though Big Blue said it fixed the issue. More recent concerns, which helped spur the Intel deal, included tension between Apple's desire for a wide variety of PowerPC processors and IBM's concerns about the profitability of a low-volume business, according to one source familiar with the partnership. >IBM loses cachet with the end of the Apple partnership, but it can take consolation in that it's designing and manufacturing the Power family processors for future gaming consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Ninendo, said Clay Ryder, a Sageza Group analyst. "I would think in the sheer volume, all the stuff they're doing with the game consoles would be bigger. But anytime you lose a high-profile customer, that hurts in ways that are not quantifiable but that still hurt," Ryder said. furthermore, if you look past the "Intel is just too slow for the power envelope" that you stated: >The "bad quality assurance of Skylake" was responsible for Apple finally making the decision to ditch Intel and focus on its own ARM-based processors for high-performance machines. That's the claim made by outspoken former Intel principal engineer, François Piednoël. "For me this is the inflection point," says Piednoël. "This is where the Apple guys who were always contemplating to switch, they went and looked at it and said: 'Well, we've probably got to do it.' Basically the bad quality assurance of Skylake is responsible for them to actually go away from the platform." So both of the claims about cycles/J being the reason are just sound bite ahistoria. >The PowerXCell 8i powered super computers also dominated all of the top 6 "greenest" systems in the Green500 list, with highest MFLOPS/Watt ratio supercomputers in the world. that's 2008 - when apple originally announced they'd complete the move to intel. PS3 underpowered? >According to Folding@Home in a statement on its website; “Using the Cell processor of the PS3, we should be able to do more folding than what one could do on a PC. Also, since the PS3 has a powerful GPU, the PS3 client will offer real time visualization for the first time. Also if you compare like for like, the CPUs IBM put out in 2005 with 3.2ghz had a TDP of 75W. Intel CPUs in 2005 at 3.2GHZ used 130W TDP. both used 90nm processes. You're fractally wrong. I could actually keep going with every claim you made and put paragraphs in. I'm sorry.

macintux 2y ago

Microsoft has no courage. They have to keep catering to every possible audience, so they’re not willing to pull the plug on x86, which means ARM will always play second fiddle.

Dalewyn 2y ago
Microsoft and Windows (and by extension x86) achieved their desktop market dominance by respecting that most people want backwards compatibility. Everything that has tried to go or is going against that tide either failed (eg: Itanium, Windows RT) or never had market share to lose in the first place (eg: MacOS, Linux in the consumer space). Microsoft would be stupid to be "courageous" and drop backwards compatibility, that would even trump Apple's courage abandoning the headphone jack. It also makes business sense to keep your eggs in multiple baskets, assuming those baskets are each commercially viable.
makeitdouble 2y ago
> Microsoft has no courage Sadly the headphone jack is definitely dead. > They have to keep catering to every possible audience That's not Microsoft's job at this point, they heavily invest and push the envelop where makers don't want to take the risk, but from there it's for Lenovo, Dell, HP, Asus etc. to decide what they want to market and which chip to push. The same way some of them put weight behind AMD while other went full Intel 100% of the time.

rcarmo 2y ago

I don't think the Intel or AMD chips will be (literally) as cool. AMD mini-PCs are _close_ to what an M1 can do, but still too power-hungry and slow.