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>RISC-V with windows will be an eternity to be feasible. Will it now? Microsoft was already deeply involved in 2021 as per that years' summit RISC-V Foundatio
by snvzz 2y ago
>RISC-V with windows will be an eternity to be feasible.
Will it now?
Microsoft was already deeply involved in 2021 as per that years' summit RISC-V Foundation's technical talks. Ztso was pushed by them.
- dagmx 2y agoWhether Microsoft has windows running on an architecture is a very different level from whether it’s feasible to use it as a daily driver on windows. The ecosystem is what matters for most people. Windows for arm hails back to 2011. They’re only just now getting native arm ports for several major packages. That’s ~13 years for a well established architecture that’s used much more universally than RISC-V. They don’t even have arm ports for lots of software that has arm ports on macOS. RISC-V will take an aeon longer to get a respectable amount of the windows ecosystem ported over.
- snvzz 2y ago>The ecosystem is what matters for most people. Absolutely agree. The key development Microsoft has demonstrated recently is the ability to run x86 Windows software in non-x86 Windows systems. Now that this is in place -and will only get better-, there is no longer a chicken and egg situation. Instead, what we have is a clearly defined path to migrate away from x86.
- Atotalnoob 2y agoArm on windows may date to 2011, but it was mostly a side project with 1-2 maintainers. With sufficient investment, it shouldn’t take 13 years to build up RISC-V support.
- snvzz 2y agoThis. It is evident to anybody paying attention that Microsoft has RISC-V support well underway. But even if they had to start from scratch, it would be much easier, thanks to ARM having paved the way.
- dagmx 2y agoHow do you imagine ARM having helped?
- monocasa 2y agoThe x86 emulator for one.
- dagmx 2y agoFair, though I don’t think translation is a good long term strategy. You need native apps otherwise you’re always dealing with a ~20-30% disadvantage. The competition isn’t sitting still either and QC already hit this with Intel stealing their thunder with Lunar Lake. They’re efficient enough that the difference in efficiency is far overshadowed by their compatibility story. Ecosystem support will always go to the incumbent and this would place RISC-V third behind x86 and ARM. macOS did this right by saying there’s only one true way forward. It forces adoption.
- snvzz 2y ago>You need native apps For native apps, you need users. For users, you need emulation. It cannot be overstated how important successful x86 emulation is for the migration to anything else to be feasible.
- dagmx 2y agoI think you just ignored the rest of my comment though which specifically addresses why I don’t think just relying on translation is an effective strategy. Users aren’t going to switch to a platform that has lower compatibility when the incumbent has almost as good efficiency and performance.
- snvzz 2y ago>when the incumbent has almost as good efficiency and performance. The incumbent is the only two companies -Intel and AMD- that can make x86 hardware. The alternative is the rest of the industry. Thus having a migration path should be plenty on its own. Intel and AMD can both join by making RISC-V or ARM hardware themselves. My take is that they will too, eventually, come around. Or they'll just disappear from relevance.
- dagmx 2y agoSo which of Microsoft’s false starts would you take as them taking ARM seriously? Why do you think they’d take RISC-V any more seriously than their previous attempts at ARM? There are two fallacies to overcome here.