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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.'"
You will kneel before Z80!
Employing strongARM tactics? Better keep them at ARM's length. (Don't worry, these horrible puns are quite ARMless.)
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Mac users have had to endure 2 processor family changes and finally had to settle for the same one the PC uses. Could you imagine the irony if the PC switched to ARM and the Mac was left using the "outdated" x86 architecture?
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.
Democrat delenda est
Well, Microsoft can't just ignore the risk "if x86 goes down, we go down". For this reason some kind of even the lastest versions of windows portability is plausible, IMO.
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.
^Apple didn't suddenly port Mac OSX to x86. Both versions had been in development since OSX's inception so Apple could keep its options open if the PPC roadmap didn't unfold to their liking. It didn't, so they exercized the option.
The problem isn't the OS, it's the software for the OS. On Linux, you port the kernel, and then simply rebuild your distro (fixing portability bugs in the process relatively rarely). Job done. On Windows, you need mom & pop go to the car boot sale, buy Knitting Extravaganza 4.0, and still have it install/run successfully.
I think this is the whole reason why microsoft is pushing dot-net and higher-level languages -- not because they care about the languages so much, but because they care about abstracting the windows platform away from PCs until a virtual machine, like Java has been doing for years. Whether Windows, OS X, Linux, or something else wins the desktop wars, Java will survive. Microsoft wants to survive that loss too.
I don't even want to know what ix86 emulation on ARM is like...
Well, it was ok for light use in 1988 (NB: PDF file, parent page is here). That was back in the day when ARM was pitched as a high-performance workstation chip rather than a low-power option.
Seriously, though, the windows back-catalogue might not run on ARM, but the .NET framework is MS's preferred platform for new apps, and that is VM-based and supposed to be CPU independent, is it not?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Look at how quickly Apple ported Mac OS to Intel.
Apple maintained an internal cross platform port.
They do have a port for power architecture , its called the xbox360. :p
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
Was it Linus who said that Microsoft hating was a disease? I am a Linux user at home. I'm not much of a fan for Windows XP and I loath the Vista user interface. Windows 7 actually has me a little excited. And all of these are stable systems. The benefit to Windows XP being around for so long is that Microsoft had a long time to make it stable. I haven't had a blue screen of death on Windows in years. It's time for people to move on from knocking Windows for instability. It just makes them look like lackeys.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Actually, the first BSOD I had in a number of years was when I installed Vista recently (fully SPed too). I quickly went back to XP until 7 RTM came out.
Yes, I will admit 7 has been quite smooth, apart from the odd lock up/crash when playing TF2. Still, there's your lock up.
Whether you're a fanboy or not, you seem to be ill informed about windows issues. They still exist and are still a thorn in Microsoft's side.
When Apple switched from Motorola 680x0 to PowerPC processors in 1994, they built an emulator into the operating system to allow m68k code to run transparently on the new platform. In fact, they didn't even port the entire operating system itself; bits and pieces of it ran under emulation for years as Apple gradually finished porting it all.
In addition, they created an easy way for applications to be compiled natively for BOTH architectures at the same time, and encouraged application developers to release fat binary versions of their apps. This worked so well that the majority of users weren't even aware that the PowerPC was a completely new incompatible architecture, as opposed to simply a new faster version of what they'd always had.
When Apple switched CPU architectures again, they mostly duplicated this success. Some applications and drivers aren't compatible with Rosetta (the PowerPC emulator), and it's not possible to use a plugin compiled for one processor in an application compiled for another, but Apple's own developer tools offered a simple checkbox to recompile an app as a Universal Binary, and most developers have moved away from third-party compilers.
Microsoft does have x86 emulation technology that they bought from Connectix a few years ago, but they have no experience getting applications to work transparently across dissimilar architectures, and moving from a faster Intel CPU to a slower ARM CPU makes emulation pretty unappealing anyway. Look at what a pain in the ass it is just to get everything to work on a 64-bit version of Windows!
Mac developers are accustomed to following Apple's spontaneous whims, because users consistently reward them with big piles of cash, but Windows developers have a lot less incentive to play ball by releasing native applications for a platform that doesn't exist yet, has no users, and seems unlikely to get users because there is no native software. If they can make the emulation work perfectly, then they might get some users, and if they have users, some developers will start porting their apps. You'll never get all of them, of course, but the ones most people use every day will probably have ARM-native versions introduced. Also, pure .Net applications should work perfectly out-of-the-box. Microsoft wouldn't use a universal binary architecture like Mac OS X; since virtually all Windows applications require an installer and you can't easily move an app from one computer to another without reinstalling it from scratch, there's no reason to do that.
In contrast, Apple could announce a new ARM-based Mac netbook tomorrow, and a majority of developers would have native applications ready to go in six months.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
He's still wrong - I'm pretty sure mp3 phones were around before 5 years ago, and it was also around 2004 that companies were hyping viewing video on then new 3G phones.
Now 11 years ago, that's when we laughed at the idea of video on compuers :)
When the first decent mass produced netbook -running ARM- hits the status of "blisterpack computer hanging near the checkout @ $99.95".. right next to the prepaid cellphones..I think the sales will be a lot better than "nothing other" and there will be browsers and media players and chat clients and wifi and so on, on it. Who knows, I could see a combo package, the netbook AND a cellphone in the same blisterpack.
And people will not care if it isn't microsoft, or x86, just like they don't care much today with cheaper phones. If it does some basic expected things, that's all it needs. They will sell millions of those machines. Browse, watch vids or listen to tunes, do some email, do some messaging...they'll sell. Nailing that C note is a huge marketing psychological advantage, first company there with something that doesn't suck and is "good enough" will get "*rich*. At 3-5 hundred bucks like they are today, nope, just little laptops with no DVD drive, they sell good enough, but... when netbooks crack $100...license to print money almost. More apps and developer interest will follow shortly.
Compatibility layers are much different than emulation. To run a DOS/Windows 3.1/Win 95/etc. program in Windows 7 all you need is the old libraries. I assume the x86-64 instruction set includes stuff to make x86 emulation faster. My guess is that emulation x86 on an ARM processor is nowhere near fast (otherwise they'd just always run them in emulation mode and compete with the Intel Atom and Via Nano).
Is that a regular ton + the weight of the approximate animal that shit that much for a whole year?
So, the average 180lb man would excrete 1 shit ton or equivalent of 2 English pounds of solid waiste for 365 days to meet the expectancy of his shit ton?
I know a full-size mare would reach a man's shit ton every 2 months easily, so that would make a man about 1/6 mare shit ton, and if a man were to sire a creature to be half-horse then that offspring would be 1/3 mare shit ton.
I know I kinda eluded onto a metric that might differentiate from yours, so I'll wait for your enlightenment O-ring King.
I've looked at BeagleBoard and some other TI OMAP3 board specs. They all have PowerVR video/3D accelerator, which does not have any open-source drivers. And I'm not even sure about closed source ones. These boards lose 90% of their cool without them.
Reading these specs felt like kissing a girlfriend and then getting kicked in the groin... Especially at a time when it is becoming possible to have a 100% open-source supported hardware in desktop machines (ATI drivers started supporting new cards, lots of opensource wifi drivers are mature, etc).
--Coder