5 ms·

kinda funny that Microsoft has tried and failed multiple times to make Windows on ARM work and then valve is probably going to succeed, to Microsoft's detrimen

by blibble 11mo ago

kinda funny that Microsoft has tried and failed multiple times to make Windows on ARM work and then valve is probably going to succeed, to Microsoft's detriment

ZiiS 11mo ago
It may have taken them a while, but it does now work fine.
- jmkni 11mo ago
  Define 'fine'
  - Marsymars 11mo ago
    I run WoA on my daily work laptop and everything I run other than some of the junky IT-pushed apps (outlook extension to report phishing, etc.) are ARM64-native and run as expected.
    - jmkni 11mo ago
      That's good to hear, I remember that "holy shit" moment when I first moved to an Apple Silicon mac, I guess Microsoft are getting there but in a more hap-hazard "we'll make eventually" sort of way
      - Marsymars 11mo ago
        That actually makes me think of the transition to high-res displays - Apple had like a year of pain when they introduced retina displays and non-updated assets would look blurry, whereas MS (and third-party devs) took years to get Windows to the point where mostly everything looks right at higher scaling levels.
        jmkni 11mo ago
        Is a great way of looking at it
  - Someone1234 11mo ago
    You don't notice you're on ARM at all. Everything "Just Works." And you're seeing 20+ hours battery under normal workloads (i.e. not spec sheet "20 hours" but day-to-day). I've been mainlining a Windows ARM laptop for six months, and am yet to run into anything I couldn't do.
forrestthewoods 11mo ago
It turns out the best API for gaming on Linux and gaming on ARM was Win32 and x86_64. Who knew? Well, compiling ARM game binaries is actually super duper easy and just totally fine. The issue Windows actually has with ARM is GPU drivers for the ARM SoCs. Qualcomm graphics drivers are just super slow and unreliable and bad. ARM CPU w AMD GPU is easy mode.
- Pxtl 11mo ago
  Shows how a stable API will beat the hell out of bleeding-edge improvements every time.
babypuncher 11mo ago
I think the problem is that, until recently, there was little impetus to actually run Windows on devices where ARM actually has a meaningful advantage over x86. The Windows ARM laptops out there today don't impress, not just because of the software, but because the hardware itself isn't "better enough" than Intel or AMD to justify the transition for most people the way Apple Silicon was, especially for games. That is to say nothing of desktops, where battery life isn't even a concern. Valve is using ARM to run Windows games on "ultra portable" devices, starting with the Steam Frame. At least right now, there isn't a competitive x86 chip that fits this use case. It also feels like more of an experiment, as Valve themselves are setting the expectation that this is a "streaming first" headset for running games on your desktop, and they've even said not to expect a great experience playing Half-Life: Alyx locally (a nearly 7 year old title). It will be interesting to see if Intel/AMD catch up to ARM on efficiency in time to keep handhelds like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally from jumping ship. Right now it seems Valve is hedging their bets.
- philistine 11mo ago
  > At least right now, there isn't a competitive x86 chip I don't think there will ever be a competitive x86 chip. ARM is eating the world piece by piece. The only reason the Steam Deck is running x86 is because it's not performant enough with two translations (Windows to Linux, x86 to ARM). Valve is very wisely starting the switch with a VR headset, a far less popular device than its already niche Steam Deck. The next Steam Deck might already switch to ARM looking at what they announced last week. x86 is on the way out. Not in two years, perhaps not in ten years. But there will come a time where the economics no longer make sense and no one can afford to develop competitive chips for the server+gamers market alone. Then x86 is truly dead.
  - robotnikman 11mo ago
    I sure hope it takes a bit longer than that. It would not be fun having only Qualcomm chips to choose from as a CPU. Either that or Intel/AMD start making their own ARM chips
    - 11mo ago
jsheard 11mo ago
A funny detail is that Microsoft's mostly fruitless ARM efforts unintentionally ended up being a boon for Valves ARM effort. From MSVC 2019 they started augmenting x86 binaries with undocumented metadata specifically to assist the Windows x86-on-ARM emulator, but then the FEX team figured out how that works and implemented the same optimizations in their emulator, greatly increasing the performance of most recent Windows games on ARM Linux.
venturecruelty 11mo ago
Why don't they just ask Copilot to do it?
saghm 11mo ago
The key difference is that Valve isn't trying to make Windows work, just desktop gaming, which I'd imagine is a large part of why Microsoft's efforts failed. As much as Linux desktops haven't particularly had much polish over the years, there's still an advantage to taking something bare bones and trying to flesh it out in a way that's works well compared to taking something that's already pretty bloated and then trying to retrofit it into something new.
N_Lens 11mo ago
It's mostly because Microsoft have lost focus & interest in the desktop OS market and have shifted priorities to cloud service (Azure). Right now Microsoft is a sleeping giant that doesn't see the writing on the wall regarding Valve's efforts.
- sylens 11mo ago
  Oh I think they see it, the problem is that they can’t execute anymore. They are pivoting in the same direction but nobody wants to use the XBox Store on Windows and nobody trusts Game Pass anymore.
IAmNotACellist 11mo ago
They can't even make Explorer work. They're pathetic.
skrebbel 11mo ago
I don't understand what you mean by this. My wife's HP laptop has an ARM processor with Windows and it.. just works? Like everything works. The computer is super fast, quiet, great battery usage, ultrathin and even scary affordable for what you get. All software works. I've not found x64 programs to run noticeably worse, at least not the ones we use, and plenty programs have an ARM build. As a Windows user you don't even need to know that it's an ARM computer. Just use it like you'd use any other Windows computer. Don't just say stuff, man. This is not Twitter. Try to at least figure out whether you're vaguely directionally correct before writing snarky comments.
- xd1936 10mo ago
  I think they meant that by most metrics, Windows on ARM has not yet had a market impact. Not that the product doesn't work. That being said, the mindshare well of "Windows on ARM" was poisoned by Windows RT, then later the objectively terrible performance of Windows 10 on ARM at launch.

by blibble 11mo ago

kinda funny that Microsoft has tried and failed multiple times to make Windows on ARM work and then valve is probably going to succeed, to Microsoft's detriment

ZiiS 11mo ago

It may have taken them a while, but it does now work fine.

jmkni 11mo ago
Define 'fine'
- Marsymars 11mo ago
  I run WoA on my daily work laptop and everything I run other than some of the junky IT-pushed apps (outlook extension to report phishing, etc.) are ARM64-native and run as expected.
  - jmkni 11mo ago
    That's good to hear, I remember that "holy shit" moment when I first moved to an Apple Silicon mac, I guess Microsoft are getting there but in a more hap-hazard "we'll make eventually" sort of way
    - Marsymars 11mo ago
      That actually makes me think of the transition to high-res displays - Apple had like a year of pain when they introduced retina displays and non-updated assets would look blurry, whereas MS (and third-party devs) took years to get Windows to the point where mostly everything looks right at higher scaling levels.
      - jmkni 11mo ago
        Is a great way of looking at it
- Someone1234 11mo ago
  You don't notice you're on ARM at all. Everything "Just Works." And you're seeing 20+ hours battery under normal workloads (i.e. not spec sheet "20 hours" but day-to-day). I've been mainlining a Windows ARM laptop for six months, and am yet to run into anything I couldn't do.

forrestthewoods 11mo ago

It turns out the best API for gaming on Linux and gaming on ARM was Win32 and x86_64. Who knew? Well, compiling ARM game binaries is actually super duper easy and just totally fine. The issue Windows actually has with ARM is GPU drivers for the ARM SoCs. Qualcomm graphics drivers are just super slow and unreliable and bad. ARM CPU w AMD GPU is easy mode.

Pxtl 11mo ago
Shows how a stable API will beat the hell out of bleeding-edge improvements every time.

babypuncher 11mo ago

I think the problem is that, until recently, there was little impetus to actually run Windows on devices where ARM actually has a meaningful advantage over x86. The Windows ARM laptops out there today don't impress, not just because of the software, but because the hardware itself isn't "better enough" than Intel or AMD to justify the transition for most people the way Apple Silicon was, especially for games. That is to say nothing of desktops, where battery life isn't even a concern. Valve is using ARM to run Windows games on "ultra portable" devices, starting with the Steam Frame. At least right now, there isn't a competitive x86 chip that fits this use case. It also feels like more of an experiment, as Valve themselves are setting the expectation that this is a "streaming first" headset for running games on your desktop, and they've even said not to expect a great experience playing Half-Life: Alyx locally (a nearly 7 year old title). It will be interesting to see if Intel/AMD catch up to ARM on efficiency in time to keep handhelds like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally from jumping ship. Right now it seems Valve is hedging their bets.

philistine 11mo ago
> At least right now, there isn't a competitive x86 chip I don't think there will ever be a competitive x86 chip. ARM is eating the world piece by piece. The only reason the Steam Deck is running x86 is because it's not performant enough with two translations (Windows to Linux, x86 to ARM). Valve is very wisely starting the switch with a VR headset, a far less popular device than its already niche Steam Deck. The next Steam Deck might already switch to ARM looking at what they announced last week. x86 is on the way out. Not in two years, perhaps not in ten years. But there will come a time where the economics no longer make sense and no one can afford to develop competitive chips for the server+gamers market alone. Then x86 is truly dead.
- robotnikman 11mo ago
  I sure hope it takes a bit longer than that. It would not be fun having only Qualcomm chips to choose from as a CPU. Either that or Intel/AMD start making their own ARM chips
  - 11mo ago

jsheard 11mo ago

A funny detail is that Microsoft's mostly fruitless ARM efforts unintentionally ended up being a boon for Valves ARM effort. From MSVC 2019 they started augmenting x86 binaries with undocumented metadata specifically to assist the Windows x86-on-ARM emulator, but then the FEX team figured out how that works and implemented the same optimizations in their emulator, greatly increasing the performance of most recent Windows games on ARM Linux.

venturecruelty 11mo ago

Why don't they just ask Copilot to do it?

saghm 11mo ago

The key difference is that Valve isn't trying to make Windows work, just desktop gaming, which I'd imagine is a large part of why Microsoft's efforts failed. As much as Linux desktops haven't particularly had much polish over the years, there's still an advantage to taking something bare bones and trying to flesh it out in a way that's works well compared to taking something that's already pretty bloated and then trying to retrofit it into something new.

N_Lens 11mo ago

It's mostly because Microsoft have lost focus & interest in the desktop OS market and have shifted priorities to cloud service (Azure). Right now Microsoft is a sleeping giant that doesn't see the writing on the wall regarding Valve's efforts.

sylens 11mo ago
Oh I think they see it, the problem is that they can’t execute anymore. They are pivoting in the same direction but nobody wants to use the XBox Store on Windows and nobody trusts Game Pass anymore.

IAmNotACellist 11mo ago

They can't even make Explorer work. They're pathetic.

skrebbel 11mo ago

I don't understand what you mean by this. My wife's HP laptop has an ARM processor with Windows and it.. just works? Like everything works. The computer is super fast, quiet, great battery usage, ultrathin and even scary affordable for what you get. All software works. I've not found x64 programs to run noticeably worse, at least not the ones we use, and plenty programs have an ARM build. As a Windows user you don't even need to know that it's an ARM computer. Just use it like you'd use any other Windows computer. Don't just say stuff, man. This is not Twitter. Try to at least figure out whether you're vaguely directionally correct before writing snarky comments.

xd1936 10mo ago
I think they meant that by most metrics, Windows on ARM has not yet had a market impact. Not that the product doesn't work. That being said, the mindshare well of "Windows on ARM" was poisoned by Windows RT, then later the objectively terrible performance of Windows 10 on ARM at launch.