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Intel Fires Warning Shot At Qualcomm and Microsoft Over Windows 10 ARM Emulation (hothardware.com)
MojoKid quotes a report from HotHardware: Qualcomm and Microsoft are on the verge of ushering in a new class of always-connected mobile devices that run full-blown Windows 10. The two are enabling ARM-based Snapdragon 835 processors to run Windows 10 with full x86 emulation, meaning that devices will be capable of not only running Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps from the Windows Store, but legacy win32 apps as well. There is little question, Intel is likely none too pleased with it and PC OEM heavyweights Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard and ASUS have also signed-on to deliver Windows 10 notebooks and 2-in-1 convertibles powered by Qualcomm. Until now, Intel sat by quietly while all of this unfolded, but the company today took the opportunity to get a bit passive-aggressive while announcing the fast-approaching 40th anniversary of the world's first x86 microprocessor. The majority of the press release reads like a trip down memory lane. However, Intel shifts into serious mama bear mode, with significant legal posturing, touting its willingness to protect its "x86 innovations." Intel goes on to say that Transmeta tried and ultimately failed in the marketplace, and has been dead and buried for a decade. The company then pivots, almost daring Microsoft and Qualcomm to challenge it by making Windows on ARM devices commercially available. "Only time will tell if new attempts to emulate Intel's x86 ISA will meet a different fate. Intel welcomes lawful competition... However, we do not welcome unlawful infringement of our patents, and we fully expect other companies to continue to respect Intel's intellectual property rights."
Between the fact that current ISA is actually AMD64 (which is x86 compatible, but not intel-designed) and the fact that many key patents should have expired by now, it's going to be interesting if intel has the legal bass to actually stop this from happening.
How fast can Snapdragon processors run Windows software? I'm sure that productivity software - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenOffice Acrobat Reader, Edge, Firefox, Chrome et cetera - will run just fine. That stuff doesn't need huge CPU power to begin with. What about something more CPU-heavy like Adobe Photoshop, AfterEffects, AutoCAD, 3D Max,Blender, Handbrake? How fast will that software run on Snapdragon? Of course this is no big problem - if ARM can't run it today, you can always run it on an Intel or AMD box. But the question remains - how fast is emulated Windows on ARM?
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Windows 10 on ARM is not Windows RT. It's full Windows 10 compiled for ARM so even without the emulation you can install and run ARM applications just as you would install x86 applications for Windows 10 on x86. Having the ability to run x86 apps on ARM would be a nice feature. I hope legal wrangling doesn't prevent it from shipping.
...the writing on the wall?
The future is mobile, and in mobile RISC wins (for now). First you emulate, then you go native. Microsoft has seen the new Samsung S8 working as a desktop replacement with a dock, and is sweating cold. If that trend goes on (and why shouldn't it, as phones become more powerful), and mobile apps adapt to the "desktop mode", soon Windows will have a real competitor. I can see plane stewardesses distributing keyboards to the passengers, so as to use the entertainment screens with your "desktop mobile". I can see "laptops" that are just a screen, a keyboard, a humongous battery and a dock bay for your phone.
You cannot fight the tide. In three years smartphones will ship with 1 Tb storage, 16 Gb memory, and 16 cores CPU. All of them itching to do something more demanding than displaying your last photo of your cat. If Microsoft doesn't emulate in firmware, VMWare will emulate in software, and soon you won't care in which OS is your app working. You will have one and only one computer, that will incidentally have the capacity of making phone calls. Congratulations everybody, we are just now entering the era of the PC.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I have heard that Intel is delighted about AMD's new 32 core server CPU and 16 core desktop CPU. If I remember correctly, the last time Intel was this delighted with AMD they started bribing system manufacturers into not offering any AMD-based products.
Windows 10S is also hobbled by design. Only Edge browser, Only Bing as a search engine, only Apps from the MS App store (a veritable desert)
This is a walled garden that is higher than Apple's on the iPhone.
You can get rid of the lock down by paying MS $$$$ but honestly, W10 is a dead OS walking as far as an awful lot of people are concerned.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
They are belly-aching like the candlestick makers did 100 years ago when the place was being electrified. They represent the old way of doing things.
You can get rid of the lock down by paying MS $$$$
So, just like buying Windows 10 now between the Home, Pro, and Enterprise versions? Doesn't sound like a big deal.
Given that Microsoft does not innovate, I suspect that they are simply running QEMU to support old software. If the original post is correct, it is only supporting 32 bit anyway.
Big deal.
Proposition: Apple are planning to release low end macOS products based on their ARM64 SoCs.
Imagine having a common ARM-based hardware spec for Watch, Mac Mini, iPhone, iPad, MacBook and iMac - only select 'Pro' models would require Intel Inside.
Such a transition would require checking an extra box in XCode for fat-binaries. Optionally they could develop a Rosetta-style translation layer for 'legacy' amd64 only binaries.
Linux distros like privacyenhanced(dot)blogspot(dot)com are already fully ARM 64-bit, no QEMU required. And my Pi 3 only cost $35 so I don't need a $350 alternative from Apple either.
MS has been the whipping boy for ages. Fuck MS, start shipping Linux.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi
Do ARM processors come with hardware backdooors?
Lawyers are the last argument of technology companies that have lost the power to innovate. Intel wouldn't be saying these things if they had invested in technology rather than idiotic purchases of horrid anti-virus companies, bizarre offshore strategies, and generally letting wall st. run them rather than engineers and technologists.
I read, "We welcome new competitors at the x86 architecture market but we will sue the shit out of you if you actually try".
I got two systems in my collection / office ;-) Each time I read Intel press like this I power them up just for the warm feeling :-)
https://www.t2-project.org/har...
https://www.t2-project.org/har...
They are also visible on my desk in some of my recent videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/r...
Buying Windows ? when you can get Linux for Free ?
aaaaaaa
...However, we do not welcome unlawful infringement of our patents, and we fully expect other companies to continue to respect Intel's intellectual property rights.
Compaq all over again.
Keep in mind it's not emulated Windows on ARM, it's microcode X86 on ARM, which is pretty much how x86 chips are implemented now. Video editing is GPU hog anyway.
Poor Intel, AMD Threadripper is faster and a lot cheaper and a lot more scalable at the high end, and ARM is a shitload faster and cheaper than their mobile chips.
That leaves them mid-range desktop chips in a declining PC market.
I put Ubuntu on an Android TV box (and 8 Core 64 bit A53 ARM chip), and its absolutely brilliant. It cost me $64. It's difficult to see them keeping even that middle ground.
There is a reason desktop Linux distributions are free. It's because that's what people is willing to pay for it: nothing. Even people who "loves" Linux isn't willing to pay shit for it (that's the reason Canonical tried the phone market and now they are playing with IoT, because they can't get profitable in the desktop for their lives).
Just release Windows 7 drivers fro Kaby Lake. That will esentially stop a lot of people form getting Windows 10.
DEC's FX!32 dynamic binary translator appeared on the scene in the early 1990s; Patents on that stuff belong to DEC-->Compaq-->HP. (If they are not expired already). So Intel is likely just posturing.
Yeah, because that hasn't been the case for like 20 years now.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It seems that Intel is threatening to use their patents to lock competition out of the market like Qualcomm does. Isn't this against the principles of FRAND?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The problem here is that Intel has no legal basis to threaten anyone over x86, so instead they are just blowing smoke to scare away investors using the press. Both side know that Intel's x86 patents have expired and AMD owns all the patents for x86_64 which is also known by it's original name AMD64. Since Intel is now powerless, they are reverting back to their old anti-competitive habits.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Buying Windows ? when you can get Linux for Free ?
I'd rather put my gentlemans vegetables in a blender
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
You're begging the question then. Why doesn't AMD take legal action? Windows 10 on ARM would hurt them as much as it would Intel.
"Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard and ASUS have also signed-on to deliver Windows 10 notebooks and 2-in-1 convertibles powered by Qualcomm"
Forgive my ignorance, but does this offer any advantages to the consumer? My initial reaction is that it sounds like a way to sell cheap-to-manufacture, under-powered devices to consumers in order to increase profit margin.
Micro$oft is trying to create "emulators" for everything to keep people that don't know any better hooked into their control. Figuratively speaking, they only allow smaller Russian dolls and they make sure that they are always the largest one. They did it with Linux, which is also being emulated (GNU/NT; no kernel) and now they are doing it to Intel. They join the Linux foundation and "help" Canonical and then a few months after the mobile version of Ubuntu was starting to actual look like it would be successful, tablets being sold like crazy, Ubuntu respins it like it was a failure. Bullshit. They were about to do better than the M$ mobile junk and Canonical got a phone call. Fast forward to Intel's problem and take a look at how closely Intel and M$ have been working together in the past few months. Now, M$ wants to emulate them too and on their...*trumpets*...mobile phone. Masters of backstabbing.
That's all I needed to hear. Kiss Android goodbye!
ARM sells about 14 billion processor a year. Intel sells about 400 million processors a year.
Every device running an ARM processor isn't running an Intel processor.
Tell me again how Intel is going to "wake up". They're fighting AMD for scraps.
1. Intel wants into the mobile market. 2. Intel's attempts with Atom to get into the mobile market go nowhere. 3. Microsoft wants into the mobile market. 4. Microsoft's attempts with Windows RT to get onto ARM architecture go nowhere. 5. Intel can't beat ARM on cost. 6. The Wintel Monopoly. 7. The Wintel Monopoly... no more! 8. Shrinking PC shipments. 9. Android surpasses Windows as world's most installed OS. 10. Windows on ARM. 11. Will that work? Battery life? Performance? Experience? 12. What will Intel do? They still want into mobile.
Microsoft is clearly desperate. Losing money with wrong acquisitions, Windows (overtaken by android) and office in a tricky situation (google docs). They even make Windows on demand (see recent Windows 10 China Edition) so that they can get any money. Intel with its never-ending (good) battle with AMD hasn't it easier, but they are not desperate as Microsoft seems to be.
So either MS or Intel falls, or we are back to the times of multiple architectures (sgi, alpha, mips...)
Will he get a Golden Parachute or nice severance package?
I like how Microsoft labels win32 as legacy, yet even though their app store is 5 years old now, nobody uses it or the crappy apps it has. Likewise, Windows 10 S will surely flop because Microsoft's crap app ecosystem is wanted by nobody.
we can't have nice things.
"There have been reports that some companies may try to emulate Intel’s proprietary x86 ISA without Intel’s authorization. Emulation is not a new technology, and Transmeta was notably the last company to claim to have produced a compatible x86 processor using emulation (“code morphing”) techniques. Intel enforced patents relating to SIMD instruction set enhancements against Transmeta’s x86 implementation even though it used emulation."
This is so sad. It is like watching a great whale, an amazing creature, be caught by an 1800's era whaling ship. It runs. It fights. It struggles against the hooks.
I'm grieving the loss, because at one time Intel was beautiful. It is dying, soon to be dead. Too bad those in charge have not vision to see their doom, nor will to stop it.
It may be a strategic loss for the US, one that can cripple.
EngrStudent
Intel dropped the ball years ago by never really seriously committed itself to offering mobile CPUs for smartphones, where the focus is on battery life rather than pushing the speed envelope.
Glad to hear. I have one of their sticks on the shelf.
If this catches on, I'm looking forward to the flood of cheap Windows 10 tablets that will have support dropped after two years because the BSP for their SoC is no longer being updated or maintained.
Granted, I expect Microsoft to do marginally better with Windows on ARM than Google does with Android because Microsoft has much tighter control over the Windows ecosystem. But at the end of the day, if you want to play in the ARM playground, you're going to get burned by short chip life cycles.
On the other hand, I could be completely wrong. Please, someone prove me wring. I'm tired of being a cynic.
DEC sold their semi business to Intel as a part of their lawsuit settlement, and that happened a while before Compaq acquired DEC
The issue w/ Windows RT was that applications could only be made available via the Windows Store, in order to avoid any confusion b/w an application bought for Windows 8 that wouldn't then install on RT. The general public is not familiar w/ ARM vs x86, which is why they did that. Here, if one tries to install a Wintel application on Windows 10 for ARM, it'll install, but then run emulated. And that performance is more likely to suck, given the history of better microprocessors before it trying the same thing - particularly DEC on the Alpha.
Instead, Microsoft should encourage vendors to cross compile for both x86 and ARM, so that any tablet/laptop can download the relevant binaries and go from there.
Take that, every English teacher you've ever had from grade 3 onwards.
There's the difference. Calvin is fighting the good fight. Whereas the above sentence is clown-car laser water-canon own-goal toward the cause of youthful creative autonomy.
Advantage, Miss Wormwood.
A sizeable chunk of the XBox game library is now for sale in the Windows Store for Win 10 machines. I wouldn't classify that as stuff nobody wants.
What part of emulate do they not understand?
Can't wait for x86 to die; is RISCv mainstream yet?
Going back to running NT on the 64bit Alpha processor. Ninety percent of the performance loss was due to masking all pointers back to 32 bits all over.
"In the early days of our microprocessor business, Intel needed to enforce its patent rights against various companies including United Microelectronics Corporation, Advanced Micro Devices, Cyrix Corporation, Chips and Technologies, Via Technologies, and, most recently, Transmeta Corporation. Enforcement actions have been unnecessary in recent years because other companies have respected Intel’s intellectual property rights."
Actually, enforcement became unnecessary as most were driven out of the chip business, or out of business entirely.
How can application developers help undermine such rent-seeking behavior on the application side? Are cross-OS, cross-instruction-set fat-binaries a thing?
That's fine, but nobody buys it that way, opting for steam 98% of the time instead.
This is why Intel needs to invest in Linux and fuck Microsoft over