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Qualcomm Wants a Piece of the PC Market
jfruhlinger writes "Much of Intel's story of the past few years has involved its so far fruitless attempts to break into the smartphone and tablet market. But as it keeps trying, it may find competition on its home turf: Qualcomm, which makes many of the ARM-based chips in those smartphones and tablets, wants to make PCs, too. The advent of Windows 8 for ARM and Android will make this possible."
What goes around, comes around.
At one time, Apple pitched RISC (ala PowerPC) as the logical successor to CISC (x86). They were also an early investor in ARM (along with Acorn and VLSI). Intel, though, had the development resouces ($$$) to stave that off.
Sounds like it might finally be happening.
(Opinion: Too bad Apple has turned evil in the interim.)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Just what I can't wait to have, a PC that I can't get any drivers for or put anything but the singular blessed Windows 8 installation it came with on.
I'm sorry, but unless Windows 8 comes with a top-notch emulation platform to run x86 apps, this is dead. As much as I enjoy having an Android smartphone, having a PC running Android is something I DO NOT WANT. The main reasons why people want a full fledged PC rather than a tablet is for certain legacy applications (along with a real keyboard/mouse!) and such. If Linux hasn't been able to succeed on the desktop, then I see no reason why ARM would succeed. Plus, we all know that people are going to be talked out of this by your typical Best Buy salesmen and your average person who /thinks/ they are computer savvy but not really. When looking at a 1.2 Ghz ARM CPU vs a 2.2 Ghz x86 CPU their gut instinct is to go for the x86 even though it might be inferior to the ARM.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Did that mean (Windows 8 for ARM) and Android, or Windows 8 for (ARM and Android)?
Are you a dumb compiler that can't parse faulty english using human language skills and context analysis? Fuck off.
But as it keeps trying, it may find competition on its home turf: Qualcomm, which makes many of the ARM-based chips in those smartphones and tablets, wants to make PCs, too.
The article linked to says
The company is talking with PC makers about building thin and light computers based on its Snapdragon chips, Jacobs said during a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show.
which isn't quite the same as "Qualcomm ... wants to make PCs".
Before I being, bear in mind, the whole annoying mantra that x86 will NEVER compete with ARM in low-power applications has just been shot out of the water: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones
I've been hearing ad-nauseum about how all ARM has to do to destroy x86 in the desktop market is to flip a couple of bits and they'll have "good enough" performance while using zero-point energy that produces free power and unicorns since about 2006. In the meantime, the exact same people who say that ARM is "good enough" rip dual-core Atoms for being too slow (while the single-core Medefield I just linked to is faster than dual--core A9's in the Iphone 4S and Galaxy Nexus, while using less power).
I've also heard about how the A15 will completely blow Intel away when it finally shows up blah blah blah (I heard the exact same story about the A9 cores btw, and Intel is still in business).
What I have yet to see is ARM *really* ratchet up performance... and no, I'm not saying that they need to beat Ivy Bridge... I'm saying they need to *approximate* a mobile 1.8Ghz Core 2 from about 2006 to get that "good enough" performance. I have yet to see that chip, and for all you fanboys out there, the A15 is *not* that chip (it'll likely finally beat a single-core Atom from 2008... but remember the single-core Atom was never good enough to begin with!). Intel has closed the gap for x86... it's a done deal, and no amount of "ARM is magical" will change the laws of physics.
ARM has *NOT* closed the performance gap with x86, and when you add in all the cache, real memory controllers (not those jokes used in current ARM designs) and I/O controllers needed to do real work, your ARM chip will end up using just as much power as a competitive x86, no matter how many forums you go on to brag about the superioirity of the ARM instruction set that doesn't even do 64 bit, and which you never even write assembler for anyway.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
The year of the WINE desktop!
Where can I sign up to start making them myself?
Windows on ARM PC and we can't forget the year of Linux on the desktop. Yeah, right.
Qualcomm folks must be smoke'n something good to think Windows on ARM is going to be worth a hill of beans. It'll probably be just as good as Windows on the OLPC XO was, at best.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Given the rumors surrounding how poorly Windows 8 is running on Qualcomm silicon I wouldn't bet on them doubling down on microsoft products anytime soon.
With even Microsoft's emphasis on online apps these days, it shouldn't matter what processor a system has. They made their bed, I guess they can lie in it.
As far as emulators, everyone recalls the PC emulators available for the PPC Macs. They did work, but the system they were emulating was slow by standards of the time. You could in principle emulate any processor on any other processor - but would it be worthwhile?
The limited screen space on netbooks was intel's fault. Basically intel restricted the "netbook" to 1024x600 resolution to avoid cannablizing their high-margin "notebook" market. It wouldn't sell atom processors to vendors that violated this restriction and actively discouraged any atom processors w/o their own integrated graphics (by pricing the stand alone atom processors more than the combination chipset package which required signing the "netbook" restriction agreement). Although intel got dinged for this anti-trust behavior, it was basically too late for the netbook market.
Given that I already run Linux on non-x86 architectures I've long awaited for an alternative CPU to use in my desktop PC. x86 has a lot of baggage from the need to be backwards compatible with an architecture developed in the 1980s, so scrapping all that and reusing the transistors for something more performance oriented would be fine with me.
probably a windows 8 user
It doesn't matter as that turkey is gonna bomb so hard it'll finally make MSFT Bob look good!
Think about it friends, the way to know a thing is to understand it, now why do people buy Windows machines? Why to run WINDOWS programs of course! And guess what don't run on ARM? The 25 damned years worth of X86 Windows programs that everybody buys fricking windows for in the first place!
I can tell you what is gonna happen because i saw a dry run of it last Xmas, a local merchant was selling "Windows tablets!" and it looked like XP, but had in the corner a little "Compact Edition" label. Do you think ANYBODY knew what the fuck that meant? Hell no, they can't keep up with all the Windows versions anyway! So many bought the things and took them home, tried them and when they found they wouldn't actually run WINDOWS programs on a "Windows Tablet" they were brought back EN MASSE. The merchant ended up having to stick a sticker over the Windows part and sell them for a loss as a generic tablet.
And THAT dear children is what is gonna happen with Windows 8, Ballmer is trying to force a cell phone OS onto the desktop which doesn't have touch screens for 99.5% of the units being sold and at the same time fool developers into thinking "Hey if I write for Win 8 i can sell anywhere!" which of course is complete horseshit as X86 and ARM devices are about as different as mopeds and semi trucks. one you have to be ultra light and give a shit about resources, the other? Meh they got multicores and assloads of RAM anyway right?
The only thing that makes sense to me is that Ballmer is hated enough by the engineers they are gonna let the sweaty monkey hang himself by his own stupid ideas, otherwise somebody would have called captain obvious to save the day. Everyone knows since he has been CEO its been one clusterfuck after another with only the fact they brought in the office guys to gut Vista and rebuild it from the ground up into a decent OS keeping them from back to back flops. I mean look at his track record, rushing X360 with a fatal flaw costing billions, Zune, killing playsforsure for Zune market, kin, WinPhone looks to be another WinMo flop, hell i could probably go on all day. Any company that is stupid enough to waste resources on Windows 8 development deserves to fail. the smart money says everyone sticks with Win 7 which will hopefully get the monkey FIRED and bring in someone like Ozzie that has a brain. Lets face it if he wasn't billy's little buddy he'd already be shitcanned, he's cost them dump trucks worth of money trying to be Apple.
Final prediction? Win 8 total flop, win 7 sells like mad as people scramble to keep from getting stuck with win 8, OEMs demand downgrade rights to 7, Ballmer fired. The last one not a sure bet if Billy gets involved but surely another Vista flop will have the board revolt.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I was just going to comment but then I noticed "PC" is the laptop. So PC is the multi-purpose "tool" used for something else than browsing and email? It can't be a a laptop as laptops don't usually have the muscle (it's possible but with $$$). So usually that leaves the desktop because we don't need mini computers in the modern era.
The thing I was going to comment was: How well this supports HTPC configuration, i.e. RAID (for storing big amounts of data), TV cards and 1080p HDMI. I guess badly as RAID is the "server" component, TV cards are the "desktop" component and 1080p movies are not really the most common use case.
Every RISC cpu is great for a particular level of complexity. And ARM is great for in order, no speculation, no branch prediction, ultra power sipping designs. Through smart use of their instruction set they have made themselves great for ultra low power, low IPC, low frequency platforms. ARM for a PC misses the point of why x86 has been successful, its easy to tack crap on the side without resolving to use of "co-processors", and the less commonly thought about advantage of x86 the fact that x86 instruction code is basically a hardware interpreted byte code at this point. No modern x86 actually runs x86 is breaks it down or decodes it into a RISC setup that is suited to the particular level of complexity of the current generation/transister count/die shrunkenness/frequency. If anyone truly cared to replace x86 they would design a fixed width CISC instruction set chip where the instructions are purposely designed to be a little higher level then risc and layed out in a way thats easy to decode into whatever the chip is actually doing the work in, so that when the next generation of chips come out you don't have to throw the whole thing out and start over like RISC has continually done over the ages.
You know what? This makes sense. I wish I had mod points.
Microsoft is right now locking horns with the "innovator's dilemma" and are fighting hard to avoid it. A new computing platform has emerged, the mobile market, and despite having a 10 year lead on it, Microsoft managed to miss the boat so badly that they make more money on patent licensing on their competitor's product (Android) than on sales of their own.
Windows 8 is their attempt to merge their Desktop environment (their strength) with the mobile market. (their complete failure after too many attempts to name)
Can they do it? Dunno. But realize that there was a time when Microsoft was the "Android" and IBM with its *nix mainframes was the "desktop". IBM mainframes still own their respective marketplace, and IBM is still a massive technology provider.
Android won't destroy Windows anymore than Windows destroyed *nix. It may take Microsoft a while to realize this.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It looks like Intel's new Atom SoC is going to be given a shot in the smartphone space: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones.
Why would a lawnmower manufacturer want to make PCs?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The problem is that under gates MSFT knew what they were, they were a consumer and business OS manufacturer. But then here came Ballmer and his entire strategy, if you can call it that, as CEO has been "What's Apple doing? Ohh me too!" and its been a disaster. if he wants to go after the consumer market on mobile he needs to split that group off from the core OS and office group so they can innovate without being tied to selling Windows and Office.
I mean have you TRIED windows 8? you really should as its very revealing, it totally sucks ass on anything that isn't a touchscreen! Its a fricking WinPhone desktop! So what you have is a desktop designed for an interface 99% of their customers WON'T have so that's a massive fail, they are porting it to an arch that is the EXACT opposite of X86 which means all their software, the ONLY thing that gives Windows a lock on the desktop, is completely gone, and finally just to really fuck up their market they are calling BOTH the X86 AND the ARM versions the same damned thing! Now how in the fuck is the average windows consumer, who doesn't know a CPU from a HDD, gonna know which one runs what? Answer, they won't which is why this is gonna be a fail of truly titanic proportions folks.
If I didn't know better I'd swear apple had snuck in a ringer as this is gonna torpedo Windows sales better than anything they could dream of! people WILL be afraid to buy it after their friends tell them horror stories about "ZOMFG I bought Windows and it wouldn't run Windows stuff ZOMFG!" and for business tying a boat anchor to the entire OS by adding a ton of little always running "craplets" as i call them will be right out not to mention since the whole thing is tied into IE you might as well call it the second coming of ActiveX so they'll be staying on win 7, this is gonna make their stock nosedive and make the OEMs so pissed you mark my words they'll DEMAND downgrade rights and it'll be Vista all over again!
But if this braindead idea isn't proof that MSFT needs a new CEO badly i don't know what is, I mean how damned obvious does the stench of failure have to be before Ballmer gets a whiff? Who in the hell thinks having a version of Windows called Windows that doesn't actually run programs for Windows is a smart idea? The saddest part is Ballmer thinks developers are so retarded they will fall for it and write all these apps for Win 8 after ignoring WinPhone and WinMo, BWA HA HA HA HA developers aren't that stupid and they'll just ignore this like WinPhone and keeping writing for droid and iOS, so its all for nothing! They are gonna blow all that money for absolutely fricking nothing!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"No branch prediction" is completely false for modern ARM processors:
http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a8.php
And ARM is great for in order, no speculation, no branch prediction, ultra power sipping designs.
The Cortex A9 core is dual-issue, out-of-order, speculative, and uses 2-level dynamic branch prediction. This doesn't seem to have adversely effected its power consumption in relation to previous designs, and it doesn't appear that the instruction set has made this difficult for them to implement.
This is absolutely right! Remember in the 90s, when Microsoft introduced NT for RISC platforms like the Alpha & MIPS, they never ported their major programs there, like Office, nor the bulk of their apps. That made the MIPS version almost a non-starter (Silocon Graphics itself gave up very quickly, and NeTpower soon abandoned MIPS for Pentiums, while DeskStation abandoned MIPS for Alphas), while Alpha struggled to emulate Windows programs on an emulation software called FX!32, which of course just eliminated the sole advantage Alphas had over Pentiums - performance. Years later, Compaq pulled the plug on it, while NEC pulled the plug on NT/MIPS.
If Microsoft had, at that time, made Windows a portable platform and ported all their apps to all their Windows platforms, it would have ensured success of Windows on all platforms, and apart from making RISC platforms popular, would have made Windows ready to fly on any platform, w/ ready apps and all that. Microsoft of course didn't, those RISC platforms failed, Windows remained an Intel only OS. In fact, given that MIPS spans a wide variety of processors - from low power to top performance used in Silicon Graphics servers, had Microsoft ported everything to that, they'd have had a platform today, which, though not ARM, would have easily run many, if not most Windows programs, and there could have been spins for all sorts of devices - tablets, phones, laptops or anything else.
But they didn't, and now, they are struggling to be in 3rd place in the tablet market - something they'd not be had they all these years ensured at least that all their own apps run on RISC. By letting their Windows on RISC die, their wounds here are pretty much self inflicted. Now, they want to re-create a Windows on RISC, but why would devs select them over Apple or Android?
If Microsoft wants Windows 8 tablets to succeed, their only way to do it is to make their tablet platform the Atom and the Fusion, and let Intel & AMD provide the target CPUs for that segment, so that they can at least get their apps to run. It will have to be something where their apps will be the same as before, except that in addition to keyboard and mouse inputs, it will recognize touchscreen inputs. Otherwise, I don't see Microsoft doing better than even RIM or WebOS (whoever ends up owning it) in this segment.
As far as Windows 8 for the desktop goes, if their resource consumption this time is less than Windows 7, that would be the only reason to switch. Also, they have to provide a way (read: tinkering w/ registry settings is not a way) to have the Windows 7 UX if one wishes - don't make it a choice b/w just Metro and the old Windows 2000 classic.
Think about it friends, the way to know a thing is to understand it, now why do people buy Windows machines?
I'd answer: because that is what is installed on a $300 Dell.
The days of bringing home the office suite from work are over for most people, thanks to DRM.
I don't think ARM windows will be much of a hit with corporations, but I don't think people in general will even know the difference - they will just buy whatever is on the app store. Plus, some enterprising company will come out with an emulator. Since most of the UI won't need emulation, it might even have a chance at not sucking performance-wise.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
it's stupid anyways. windows for arm is going to be just wp7(or 8, but the point being it's just the vm shit) for big screens. but the tech media happily ignores this as they can sell "arm is going to kill x86" stories if they do.
so it's zune for desktop. who the fuck is going to buy that? bigger screens androids will sell more units in coming years though sure, but so what, they're for different uses - I really doubt people are going to flock to them to do android _development_ on them. why would you when you can buy kickass pc's for pennies? apple will push arm increasingly as well because their new target is media consumption and lock-in-happiness instead of media creation.
the x86 windows 8 will do just fine though. it's just an update to win7 and the possibility to run metro launcher, which nobody is going to use except the windows media center guys.
if microsoft is stupid enough to brand arm-tablets and arm-ultrabook-laptops running on zune-windows as "windows 8" remains to be seen though. that would be a major, major fuck up.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Although I agree with much of what you said, I think there are a few important points you're missing.
First, much of the demand for Windows on ARM is for servers, not consumer products. When you're running a big server farm, computation/watt is everything, and ARM is still ahead of Intel on that. And legacy apps aren't as much of an issue there. In fact, if you support nothing but a few web servers, a few databases, and Java/PHP/Python/Ruby, that's enough to open up a huge market right there. Servers are also likely to be running custom software, which the customer can compile for ARM just as easily as for Intel.
Second, don't neglect the possibilities for Android. Devices like the Asus Transformer are already starting to blur the line between tablets and laptops, just as Windows 8 aims to blur the line from the other direction. And Android has a huge base of existing software, just like Windows. It's not hard to imagine that within a couple of years, many people will consider Windows and Android equally good options for their primary computing device (and that device will be usable as a tablet, a laptop, and a desktop just by attaching or detaching an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor).
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Also make it 64bit, attach a SIMD instruction set that doesn't suck balls, and a standardized implementation of an MMU would be nice.
they are porting it to an arch that is the EXACT opposite of X86 which means all their software, the ONLY thing that gives Windows a lock on the desktop, is completely gone
Except for anything Java and .Net, which run on a VM so assuming they have ARM VMs (which they do) that software will run fine, and im sure many popular vendors will recompile their native programs for ARM. I'm not saying ARM desktops are a good idea, in fact I agree with you on that and don't really see a reason why you would buy an ARM desktop over an x86 one if you're going to run Windows on it, but the software problem isn't that bad.
.Net, whether that will work though remains to be seen, if it fails i guess ill stick to the ipad and OSX, but then even Apple seem to be hinting on unifying their platforms (particularly with the 'Launchpad' in Lion). The good thing is MS won't dump backwards compatibility quickly, with an x86 PC and Windows 8 you'll still be able to run all your programs and hopefully that will be supported for another 10 years.
I find MS' strategy here interesting, they're trying to unify their desktop/laptop, tablet and phone (with WP Apollo) with
Your comments may be justified if qualcomm uses big-endian byte organization for integers, and if their format for floating point is not the same as Intels. Then, the ARM solution will pose difficulties.
Otherwise, Qualcomm and AMD will be good competition to Intel.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Name ONE program, just one mind you, that consumers use that is written in either .NET or JAVA. I service and sell them machines 6 days a week and I don't even bother installing either one anymore as they don't need it since AMD tossed .NET for Visual C++. I personally haven't had Java installed since 2004, never run into anything that needed it, and while I have .NET simply because Win 7 came with it there isn't a single app actually using it.
You want to know what they ARE using I'll be happy to tell ya, they are using all the programs you get on CDs at Walmart, they are using some video editing app that came with their camera, some photo app that came with their printer (usually Roxio or EasyShare) and a ton of flash gaming like Farmville. notice that NONE of those run on ARM?
What's gonna slaughter Windows 8 is calling the ARM version Windows 8 so nobody knows which is the "good" version and which is the "don't run shit" version. Mark my words its gonna be WinNT for MIPS all over again, where you get a desktop that LOOKS like Windows, ACTS like Windows, but won't actually RUN Windows programs. And lets face it, nobody buys Windows to run IE and MS Office, they buy it because they have a drawer full of program discs that are for Windows. that's why MSFT has to kill themselves with backwards compatibility because if folks can't run their programs then what is the point? The lovely Windows wallpapers?
But Apple is a different beast entirely, because thanks to the high resale value many just upgrade when the next model comes out, just like those that lease a new car every year. And nearly ALL the major programs people buy Apple for, iTunes, iMovie, garageband, are all made BY APPLE, which is 180 degrees opposite of the Windows way. Mark my words Win 8 is gonna make Vista look like Win95, with OEMs downgrading every box and laptop before it ever leaves the floor and users going out of their way NOT to buy it. MSFT just doesn't seem to grasp that all it takes is a few horror stories to turn the entire public off but I saw it first hand, i had to downgrade new builds before i could sell them because the second I said "Vista" they walked on by, never gave it a second thought. While I can understand them wanting to have "one code to run them all" unless they can design an ARM chip with close to native speed emulation of x86 its just doomed to fail.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Name ONE program, just one mind you, that consumers use that is written in either .NET or JAVA.
A quick glance in my start menu: CDBurnerXP, which is written in .Net. But of course there are plenty of others and pretty much everything bundled in Windows 7 is .Net and naturally there are .Net/Java alternatives to many of the small utilities many people use. Add to it that many popular applications utilize cross-platform frameworks like Qt and will only need a recompile targeted at ARM to work straight away.
since AMD tossed .NET for Visual C++.
Since when did AMD get rid of .Net in favor of VC++?
You want to know what they ARE using I'll be happy to tell ya, they are using all the programs you get on CDs at Walmart, they are using some video editing app that came with their camera, some photo app that came with their printer (usually Roxio or EasyShare) and a ton of flash gaming like Farmville. notice that NONE of those run on ARM?
Actually Flash and Air run on ARM. As for the others how could i 'notice that none of them run on ARM' when you aren't telling me what they actually are or what they are written in, you're just saying they're 'some video editing app' or 'some photo app', you don't specify what they are, much less what language they are written in or what framework they use, which i doubt you even know. What is the Roxio and Easyshare software written in?