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.'"

Comments

Re:JVM/CLR

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Here's what I think would be funny...

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Make MS come to you

[dhavleak]

Take yourself a little less seriously for 5 minutes, and try to come up with a credible scenario in which MS can fuck ARM over. Remember for those 5 minutes that TFA refers to CPU architectures. Try to resist MS-bashing just long enough to stay on topic..

In any case, let me address a bit of that garbage you spewed:

1. Regarding your point about Lotus. Read here to be disabused of this myth/dogma: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html Or here if you prefer: http://slashdot.org/articles/05/08/02/2219208.shtml?tid=109&tid=1
2. "Vice president of Intel, Steven McGeady..." -- whatever. It's just words..
3. You don't think Active-X was simply a plugin architecture? Why do you suppose other browsers have plugin architectures? All of them are trying to break compatibility with each other???
4. "Microsoft put pressure on AOL to make its IM networks ** interoperable ** with competing instant messaging services, an outcome that eroded AOL's market leadership." What exactly are you complaining about here???
5. Adobe Systems refused to let Microsoft implement built-in PDF support in Microsoft Office, citing fears of EEE." And this is proof that MS is evil? Adobe disallowed something, therefore MS is evil??
6. "A decade after the original Netscape-related antitrust suit, the web browser company Opera Software filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the European Union" Find me a 100% standards-complaint browser, I'll show you a software maker who has a right to complain. Opera and Safari do a better job than most, but nobody is 100% compliant.
7. Spreadsheet non-conformance with ODF standards" -- ODF 1.0 and 1.1 do not support formulas. The result? All ODF spreadsheet implementations are application dependant. See here for detials. Note MS's complete transparency in the implementation process.
8. "Apple Inc., Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software formed the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group to create open standards. Microsoft has so far refused to join." See here: (Chris Wilson of Microsoft was invited but did not join, citing the lack of a patent policy to ensure all specifications can be implemented on a royalty-free basis.) - What, again, was your objection?? Also note - WHATWG was formed to accelerate standards creation - not to avoid browser war incompatibilities as you claim.

That leaves you with 2 out 10. It's still pretty damning, but it's even more damning that 8 out of 10 of your accusations have no basis. So I repeat, stop taking yourself so seriously. Try seeing past the dogma for 5 mins, so you can respond with something related to the article itself rather than this off-topic drivel.