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ARM Hopes To Lure Microsoft Away From Intel
Steve Kerrison writes "With the explosion of netbooks now available, the line between PC and mobile phone is becoming much less distinct. ARM, one of the biggest companies behind CPU architectures for mobile phones (and other embedded systems), sees now as an opportunity to break out of mobiles and give Intel a run for its money. HEXUS.channel quizzes Bob Morris, ARM's director of mobile computing, on how it plans to achieve such a herculean task. Right now, ARM's pushing Android as the OS that's synonymous with the mobile Internet. But it's not simply going to ignore Microsoft: 'What if Microsoft offered a full version of Windows (as opposed to Windows Mobile or Windows CE) that used the ARM, rather than X86 (Intel and AMD) instruction set? Then it would be a straight hardware fight with Intel, in which ARM hopes its low power, low price processors will have an advantage.'"
NT was originally designed to be portable. Whether that has been retained since the abandonment of support for Alphas and PowerPCs is something I couldn't say. However, it wasn't an insurmountable effort to port other operating systems like Linux over to new infrastructures, so I doubt it would be that horrifying awful for Microsoft. In fact, I'd be damned surprised if Microsoft, like Apple before it, didn't have some resources quietly working on it.
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But it wouldn't be a straight fight between ARM and Intel. It would be a fight between ARM, StrongARM, Asynchronous ARM (yes, there really is an asynchronous CPU based on the ARM core), and every other ARM variant out there.
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Windows on ARM would be as pointless as every other port Microsoft has tried and eventually killed off. And for the same reason, lack of applications.
Microsoft itself has never bothered porting any of their consumer apps such as Office. Remember DEC having to use FX!32 to get Office running via emulation at a fraction of native speed... leading customers to fail to see the advantage of the Alpha. Now we are to expect the hundreds of large and small shops making the Windows apps people associate with "Windows" to all port to a platform where there are no suitable developer workstations available and Windows development tools lack much in the way of cross compiler support.
Compare to Linux on ARM where pretty much the entire Debian/Ubuntu collection is up and running and Adobe has ported the one key closed piece, Flash Player.
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Yes, so all the standard (rubbish) arguments people make about linux apply equally here.
Oh but I can't run $software_2_people_use! It's useless!
Don't even bother trying to make a deal with the devil. The rotting corpses of the scores of companies screwed over through their dealings with Microsoft line the landscape of the past decades tech industry. Instead, make them come to you and don't make any deals with them either. If ARM based netbooks start becoming a huge commodity, Microsoft is going to have to port a version of Windows to run on ARM processors or they'll end up missing out on sales.
It would probably make a great deal of sense for Microsoft to work on this as well as it would most certainly help out their ailing phone technologies as well. They'd probably rather that ARM-based netbooks not take off in the market, but if they were to do so, Microsoft wouldn't be able to ignore them. I wouldn't bother making any plans with them at this point; they'd only find some way to fuck you over.
The article is nothing but FUD. They base the relationship of Microsoft and Intel cooling on a comment an Intel employee made at a trade show that some Microsoft employees in the next booth overheard and said "Hey, we're listening."
This is just another crappy article that is spread over a bazillion pages when one when would do so they can push their advertisers.
"What if Microsoft switched to ARM?"
"What if Count Chocula and the Cookie Monster teamed up kidnapped the Keibler Elves? What if monkey's flew out of Cowboy Neil's butt? What is Megan Fox showed up naked at my front door with Natalie Portman covered in grits?"
Its about the same comparison.
They do have a port for power architecture , its called the xbox360. :p
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Exactly. A few people want to run Windows, but most don't care. What they do want is to run Windows apps. A port of Windows wouldn't be a straight hardware fight with Intel. Windows NT ran on Alpha and was a lot faster (and not much more expensive) than anything Intel had to offer, but all of the apps were emulated x86 apps, which ran slower than native apps on Intel chips.
The CLR helps a lot here. A .NET app isn't a native app anywhere, so it's a level playing field. Except that there are very few real .NET apps; they all include a load of native DLLs and unfortunately these are very often in performance-critical code.
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Apple already ships a huge number of OS X machines with ARM chips, they just brand them as iPhones and iPod Touches. OS X makes it easy to add another architecture for fat binaries and most OS X apps have already been ported from PowerPC to x86 so have no CPU dependencies; porting them to ARM would be relatively easy. That said, since Apple bought PA Semi, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they released a PowerPC chip that competed in the same area as ARM.
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I'm not sure what you mean with your PPC comparison? ARM have shipped 10 billion CPUs. Intel have shipped between 1 and 2 billion. ( http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9131098/ARM_Heretic_in_the_church_of_Intel_Moore_s_Law ) I'm not sure what total PPC sales, but they're not even remotely close to ARM.
What market are they going after with this, netbook's with ARM instead of Atom cpus?
Presumably. As TFS points out, the line between PCs and mobiles is becoming less distinct. I must admit, personally I'd have a preference for x86, because of compatability with PCs (which I will always prefer as a platform over locked down phones), but it's not like ARM are some niche player here.
First off, the install base counts for nothing. This is a from-scratch implementation, with an install base of zero cpu's and applications, just like Windows PPC. The number of existing systems with ARM embedded in them that can be "upgraded" to run this new OS is approximately zero. And given that Windows 7 is only slightly less cpu intensive than Windows Vista, which is what ARM wants for their CPU, and that "high-end" ARM cpu's seem to be comparable to Intel cpu's used in low-end netbooks, I don't see how people will like using it in this fashion. And it'll suffer the same problem as the PPC version of Windows did, no applications. When people read the specs and it says "Windows 7", they will expect to run Windows apps on it. Many will be disappointed when, AFTER they buy the netbook, they find out they can only run a few other applications besides whatever the system came with. And if people are just going to get stuck with using the pre-installed apps, why bother with the OEM fee to Microsoft?
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Only five years ago, people would have laughed at the idea of music and video on computers
I'm guessing the OP meant to say "on phones", not "on computers".
Even on phones, I doubt people would have been laughed at the idea five years ago. Remember that the Motorola Rokr (the iTunes compatible phone) was out almost four years ago, and it's not like playing MP3s on your phone seemed such a big deal even then.
Ten years ago, perhaps. It's almost exactly 10 years since Napster arrived, and most people at that time hadn't even heard of- let alone listened to- MP3s. The first style/youth-oriented phone, the Nokia 3210, had only just arrived as well, offering (*gasp*!) customisable ring tones- customisable monophonic beeps that is.
So, ten years ago, the embryonic parts of today's market had literally just arrived on the scene, though perhaps it wasn't obvious at the time. However, five years ago, I doubt that (given the ever-increasing power of electronics) MP3 and video on phones in the near future would have seemed that far fetched.
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If M$ can shove Vista down consumers throats (admittedly their success rate has been low), why can't folks imagine something just as preposterous on the hardware front?
Well they've been selling Linux netbooks. Remember that lots of people are buying these to access the Internet, and not to run general applications. An ARM Windows netbook won't have the disadvantages of unfamiliarity, or people who insist on Windows because that's all they know. It'll also be much easier to port apps to it from x86 Windows, than to Linux.
Anyhow, Microsoft themselves could supply web browser, email client, IM program, complete office suite, media player, which covers most people's uses of netbooks.
Simple. I have already seen it working. You add an nVidia Tegra chip, any you still stay below 2 watt.
But Vista/Win7 really is pointless. On *any* computer.
On such a small system, Linux really can play its cards. Full HD + Flash in browser + 10 hours of battery life + nearly no heat = $100-$200. Out this fall.
What do you think about that? :)
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OS X only runs on Macs, and as good as Linux is, it doesn't (sadly) seem to be gaining market share.
I can just see them quaking.
There are obvious reasons for them wanting to expand there share on netbooks and other mobile devices, but I don't think there worried about competition on the desktop.
And OS X more user friendly?
I must admit, personally I'd have a preference for x86, because of compatability with PCs (which I will always prefer as a platform over locked down phones), but it's not like ARM are some niche player here.
Compatability? I thought we used .net these days in Windows.
Why are we using a VM if the code isn't portable?