Microsoft and Qualcomm just announced at Computex that Lenovo, HP, and ASUS are expected to be the first companies with devices that feature the Snapdragon 835. Powered by Windows 10 on ARM, the ultra-thin and always-connected devices are said to usher in a new era of mobile computing.
I am excited about ARM-based Windows machines, because this time around, there’ll be a compatibility layer for running x86 applications. The built-in LTE, 4x-5x (claimed) standy time and 50% more battery life (again, claimed) are very welcome, too.
I welcome any alternatives to the x86 mono-culture in the PC field. However I have strong concerns about one aspect of microsoft’s previous policy on ARM processors: they explicitly required manufacturers to prohibit owners from installing/booting alternative operating systems… Does anyone know if microsoft intends to enforce a lock in policy on these systems?
Simple enforced policy tells everything already :
“always-connected devices”
*shivers*
Like you, I am happy for some diversity / choice in CPU architecture.
But there is a 0% chance that I will buy a Microsoft-oriented ARM device, for exactly the reason you mention – lock-in. I don’t trust MS as far as I can throw them.
I also see OS lock in as a big potential problem on (all) post-traditional-pc devices
But even though if running on Arm soc’s, phones, tablets, and now Arm laptops (chrome, now Windows, maybe Mac?) are all very similar computers internally — only the laptops will people “refer to” as computers.
I think the former two categories people are happy enough to let manufacturers call “devices” and have some special new rules.
If laptops with Arm soc’s take off, and they well might, then the only (real) leverage I see the opensource/alt-OS community have in moving across from x86 “computers” to Arm “computers” is mandatory legal requirements being put in place by governments, or EU or US antitrust legislators.
Requirements that is to specifically allow (and actually provide for) rooting, bootloader replacement etc, at least for the alt-OS’s(requiring digitally signed bootloaders/kernels might be a fair compromise).
Anyone agree?
I think the fight should start asap.
As far as I hate to defend MSFT on this (because I think running Windows on ARM is about as dumb as putting a rocket motor on a Ford Focus, it completely misses the point) how is that policy any different than what happens right now with Android?
I mean can you install the latest Ubuntu on your new Galaxy Tab? Run Debian on your new smartphone have you? Nope because the Linux community got hustled ages ago into thinking “Its got a Linux kernel therefor freedom” when in reality Android is about as “free and open” as a TiVo.
So it doesn’t really matter what policies MSFT has because on the vast majority of consumer ARM devices, we’re probably looking at like 98% of ’em, they are already closed proprietary systems they are just closed proprietary systems that happened to have a Linux kernel, again like a TiVo.
A good rule of thumb…if you have to use malware like Kingoroot to get root on your own device instead of simply entering a password? Its a closed system, and at that point it really doesn’t matter what kernel its running or what policies the corporate owner of that system has, does it?
bassbeast,
Edited 2017-06-05 06:28 UTC
For Windows…
Don’t use “emulated” software on critical infrastructure [Emulation brings out the daemons of an incomplete Theory of Systems].
Initial aim to be Joy, and a smooth extension on the hardware ecosystem.
it’s a HAL
I know I’m in the minority, but I consider ARM on windows a bad idea for open source fans.
1. Microsoft loves to lock these machines down so they can’t run Linux or BSD.
2. ARM is a terrible platform because it’s a SoC. While it’s great for power savings, it also means that there are hundreds of variants and they aren’t compatible with each other. This is a nightmare for open source systems that don’t draw large companies to port. It’s basically limiting the playing field to windows, linux and for a few systems FreeBSD.
3. The performance hit. While intel has been in a race to the bottom to slow down enough to be power competitive with ARM, most chips shipped are tweaked for mobile use and aren’t powerful enough (yet) to act as a performant workstation or desktop for power users. It may fill the grandma wants facebook demographic, but with intel giving up on the performance market it’s a real concern. I am aware of the i9 launch, but that required ryzen to happen for intel to even throw us a bone.ARM chip manufacturers need to ship a 16 to 32 core ARM chip that might have a chance against an intel build much like AMD has done. They need to embrace performance just as intel has tried to go for energy efficiency.
Lastly, we’ve seen this play out before with IBM’s short term release of PowerPC based computers running windows 95 under emulation, and the first gen surface. Unlike Apple, microsoft is very BAD at changing architectures.
Moreover, ARM on Linux usually means you are stuck forever with some old kernel version the SoC manufacturer prepared BLOBs for. On Windows there will be heavy demand on x86 emulation which may obliterate any gains in battery life.
Edited 2017-05-31 22:53 UTC
These are phone CPUs running Windows. Pick up any 835 device and you will struggle to install anything but the stock ROM. Even Android is being locked down
Microsoft support for PPC and MIPS and indeed ARM have all been native. The problem was developers made their apps only for x86
That’s probably because it’d require them to make bloated software even more bloated to support different architectures. x86 software for Microsoft platforms has always been overly bloated. Which is why it ended up always requiring more and more power and memory.
This is why Windows on ARM is a terrible idea. People think some Android variants are bloated…. wait ’til they get one of these and start filling it up with x86 software!
For Microsoft Windows, supporting multiple architectures always meant delivering separate installation media, separate SKUs, etc. Unlike when Apple went from 6800 to PPC to x86 and just did fat binaries for a while that provided usable executables for the currently supported platforms with a simple, arch-independent wrapper.
Microsoft is attempting that with their Universal Windows Program (UWP) stuff, but even then that’s rather limited.
When they tried it last time they tried to get around it by just saying “anything not .NET/Metro won’t work”, no emulation layers, etc.
The other side of it, is that there are a lot of things built in at compile time that are very architecture dependent and part of the Win32 APIs, etc. There’s a lot of bit mapping, etc too – things that are very architecturally dependent and it’s not an easy API to work with across disparate architectures. One reason why everyone centralized around a single architecture. Microsoft made the x86-32 to x86-64 transition because x86-64 was a superset of x86-32, just like with x86-16 and x86-32 years back.
And Windows users are not accustomed to throwing out their existing software when doing upgrades, etc – always a big selling point for Windows but one that goes out the door when adding new architectures.
which isn’t the case with this chip and what they are doing in Windows 10. Photoshop ran extremely well in the demonstrations….I am sure a high end rendering shop wouldn’t run this but a photographer with his 20 hour battery life laptop in the field? you betcha….A Healthcare IT guy (like myself) would love a laptop like this because I get all my tools with a very portable package and no worries about battery life or connectivity issues (thanks SoC!)
But Microsoft have never had to “change” architecture, and probably for the forseeable future, won’t.
However, Windows NT is really quite portable, and has run on more processor architectures than any Apple OS. So far, Windows NT has run on: 32bit x86; 64bit x86; Alpha; PowerPC; MIPS; Itanium; and now ARM.
However, just because it’s portable, doesn’t mean it’s compatible. Obviously, applications built on one architecture won’t work on another architecture, but that was understood back then. Sure, it didn’t help them sell more copies of Windows, but you always had the chance to recompile your code to target that CPU architecture.
However, it is also the first time that Microsoft have written an x86 emulation layer to run “PC” apps on another architecture. Apple have done it, twice, and MS have a lot of catching up to do, but hopefully it will make ARM a more successful platform for Windows than any other non-x86 architecture was.
Not true. Windows NT on Alpha ran x86 apps through very slick emulation way back in the NT 3.51 / 4.0 days.
please look at the demos. The chip emulates the x86 calls. It can do this because we have reached a point where ARM chips have enough power to do this.
Ask Intel how well people accepted the x86 emulation in their Itanic processor (yes, I know that’s not it’s real name, but it’s what most people know it as). x86 emulation has never saved anything in the tech world.
People loved it on the DEC Alpha versions of NT.
Alpha was really the only non-x86 platform that Windows had any sort of success on (excluding, of course, WinCE devices).
Exactly! There’s no need for emulation when the product itself is good. Emulation is tantamount to admitting your product sucks, but at least you can still run that old stuff you like better than anything on your product NOT emulated.
JLF65,
Emulation is simply addressing the need to run pre-existing x86 apps. This question of whether the product is any good is orthogonal to the need for emulation.
When MacOS switched to x86, it emulated PPC because otherwise users and developers would have faced the chicken and egg problem: users would put off switching because no software existed, developers would put off switching because there were too few users.
For me personally whether ARM PCs will be beneficial or not will depend on whether or not they restrict owners, locking down PCs goes against everything I grew up believing in – PC innovation originally happened because IBM/microsoft were not able to block competitors. If independent companies can no longer compete due to effective vendor locking and/or economic disadvantages (aka 30% fees), that kills off the innovative spirit of the PC industry. This is what I worry about the most, today’s children don’t have the same benefit of openness that we grew up with. Chrome isn’t any better to be honest.
I said Chrome, but meant Chromebooks. I’d blame it on coffee, but it’s really that I need more proof-reading before hitting submit, haha.
I couldn’t comment on an old discussion of us, but I thought you might find this interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXwy65d_tu8
Lennie,
We have a long history, haha, was this in regards to a specific conversation or just something you think I’ll be interested in?
I don’t have time to watch it right now. It looks cool, I’m definitely interested in open CPU tech.
Very loosely related to the FPGA discussion. But mostly about trust and hardware.
Wasn’t x86 emulation a feature of the Itanium hardware, not written in software?
EDIT: i read Intel as Microsoft. I think i need more coffee
Edited 2017-06-01 12:57 UTC
Yeah, I’m the same way before my third cup in the morning.
The X86 apps I need for my job aren’t in the Windows Store. Big brother says I have no right to run them on these devices. Conclusion: I won’t be getting one.
Windows 10 on ARM allows you to run whatever you want.
I think you’re mixing up Windows 10 ARM with Windows 10 S
A platform still to gain a minimal amount of TRUST, needs to minimize fail.
Wise could be to start with well over-sighted store applications -only. [And a non-permeable (closed) boot stack].
Initial market formula sounds as enjoy-able mobile experience. So yes, a stack ‘a la’ Microsoft S sounds great, within quality grips.
On any problem unresolvable, just download profile, OS and apps -from the store. No user “sweating” intervention -required. That a reasonable definition of “joy”.
Centennial Bridge….essentially putting your applications into a Docker container without modification.
Very simple for the vendor to do….as in….click a freaking check box.
With an SoC by Qualcomm, and their absolutely abysmal history of long term driver support, no way would I buy.
“This open-source toolkit, which was previously known as CNTK, is Microsoft^aEURTMs competitor to similar tools like TensorFlow, Caffe and Torch, and, while the first version was able to challenge many of its competitors in terms of speed, this second version puts an emphasis on usability (by adding support for Python and the popular Keras neural networking library, for example)…”
<a>https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/microsoft-releases-version-2-0-of-…
Via Digg
I’m typing this on my Surface RT… damn thing still works great, though its stuck on 8.1.
The fundamental problem was the restriction to store apps plus Office, when the store was so restricted that devs didn’t want to port to it even if they could. If you go to the trouble of porting, its not so hard in theory to add an arm build alongside x86 and x64 – Visual Studio made it harder not to, just having them there by default on new projects for Store apps.
But good store apps for 8/8.1 just never materialized, so without any desktop apps but Windows accessories and Office you couldn’t *use* the machine for much if those few apps weren’t what you use.
I’m hoping that this time around they’ll have a consistent behavior for Windows flavors, with Windows 10 S as a restricted variant that can be upgraded to unrestricted Pro regardless of whether Intel or ARM CPU… then even if the store never fills out, any Windows user will be able to use existing apps without fear.
Agree, Brion. With all the salvos that jumping into non-sandboxed modes bring to a new (to MS) architecture.
ON the philosophy of Windows, to keep a path accesible to the whole stack.
A mirror of all the In-House Tech Support Infrastructure that x86 already has in place -for ARM, don’t believe it exists [even as a plan].
Market [economics] will decide about, my bet.
ARM should be as open to coders as x86 is, in Windows.
Nadella will need both an [expensive] store and a [cheap] repository scheme. To fulfill his new open directives.
[Repository checking only on code safety and EVERY coder signature, restricted (by list) difusion, etc.]
Edited 2017-06-04 14:10 UTC
Repository not pertaining to the Restore Chain. Full manual
ARM is the future! I very much want one of these windows devices.