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Microsoft Works On Windows For ARM-Based Servers
SmartAboutThings writes According to some reports from the industry, Microsoft is working on a version of its software for servers that run on chips based on ARM Holdings's technology. Windows Server now runs on Intel hardware, but it seems that Redmond wants to diversify its strategy. An ARM-based version of Windows Server could help challenge Intel's dominance and make a place for ARM in the server market, not only in mobile chips. According to the article, though, Microsoft "hasn’t yet decided whether to make the software commercially available."
Nice checking on the editing there /.
Redmond wants to diversify its strategy.
Microsoft makes video games, consoles, operating systems, telephones, cloud services, office applications, car stereos, tablets, mice, keyboards, voip calling, a search engine, an internet browser, almost a dozen proprietary coding languages, educational books, a GPS map website, portable music players, internet chat, wireless display adapters, internet email and storage, a SQL server, and a gob of money on its training and certification services. The problem is mircosoft is creating products people do not need.
each of the aforementioned offerings has had an industry or at least socially accepted standard in place for more than 2 years, and in some cases more than a decade. Microsofts problem is that they cant come up with new ideas and fail to see the logic behind existing ideas. Arm started out as a Unix platform, and has been extensively developed as a Linux platform. the Linux kernels ARM support has existed for 4 years, which seems to be the average amount of time it takes redmond to realize something new has happened. Even if Redmond offered an arm-server version of windows, it would have to compete with well documented, functional, and most importantly free versions of Linux that likely exist on ARM because they were proven assets in X86 for their particular task, not because Windows didnt exist at the time. the standard track-run of a microsoft offering will likely be provided with their ARM offering:
1. Arm is offered, priced to buy, and servers preloaded with the microsoft tax
2. Arm is subsidized in standard licensing contracts to major businesses beholden to redmond in their desktop environment. rejecting the subsidies will cause a loss of already existing discounts, just like Azure.
3. this dole will be touted as market acceptance of Windows for ARM. metrics will be conveyed in trade journals and PHB will respond with demo units for the tech teams.
4. Tech teams will ignore the device as its not needed and performance is significantly worse than the existing *nix, not to mention exising code ported from x86 unix/linux systems wont run on it.
5. Microsoft will bail cash from XBox revenue into their ARM venture for 5-8 years, or roughly 1 zune.
6. Microsoft will quietly EOL the product and never speak of it again.
7. Microsoft will spin the wayback machine 4 years into the past and try their hand at Microsoft twitter or some equally doomed project.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The problem would be that the virtualisation of ARM on Intel or vice versa would suffer quite large performance problems. You're basically into emulation, rather than virtualisation.
So even if they could do that, you wouldn't see much point in doing it over just running your Intel stuff on Intel hypervisors and your ARM stuff on ARM hypervisors. What you'd gain would be, well, almost nothing.
At least it's a showing, though, that the Microsoft code is in a big better shape that they can port things across. That is, of course, assuming it ever comes to fruition. Microsoft has had a lot of non-Intel architectures over the years and they've always played second-fiddle and then been obsoleted.
Quite what they expect to get from aiming at ARM, I can't see. You won't get Intel compatibility, so you're effectively running another OS that - actually - only specialist places that are running huge compute farms etc. are using, or smaller gadgets where you'll struggle to sell a non-compatible Windows (like Windows CE was).
MS couldn't produce a mobile device that anybody wanted (where ARM makes much more sense). What makes them think they're going to have any success on the server front?
The only reason NT on Alpha failed was market share driven by DEC's hardware prices (the only source of Alpha based servers at the time) was about three times the equivalent i386 server from Dell or Compaq. I ran a shop fully populated with Alpha's running NT 3.1, 3.51 and NT4 at first, we switched to Dell i386 servers because of this. The DEC Alpha's did have very good availability and uptime, but for three times the cost, and very limited to non-existent third party software (backup software, security software, etc.). It was very hard to justify the expense. Not to mention being locked in to DEC for auxiliary hardware like NICs and RAID controllers which limited the selection severely, and again at triple the cost per unit. DEC Alpha's running NT were great runners, but their hardware pricing, selection and availability is what did it in, not weakness of the OS on that platform. Methinks you should get your facts and root causes for the failures in the market of the Alpha/NT product straight before you spout off.