Windows 10 for ARM - Details and Limitations Revealed

[matrix07012]

But can it run Crysis?

 

No, seriously. I'm interested to see how it's going to perform in older games.

[Doobeedoo]

Meh Win and non x86 though. 64 bit OS 32 bit only programs, 4GB RAM just no. It better be like $200 device.

I'm more interested to see a new x86 smartphone in future maybe. Once they achieve better efficiency for a phone. Having full Win 64 bit and being dockable to leverage PC powerful hardware. It'd be great. 

Maybe like Surface Phone what it could/should be. 

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

Meh Win and non x86 though. 64 bit OS 32 bit only programs, 4GB RAM just no. It better be like $200 device.

Well I think that is the eventual aim, once the slower ARM chips can run Windows 10 for ARM.

However, I don't see any software that you want to run that need more than 4GB of RAM. I am looking through my system, and beside games (which won't run on it.. I mean its a mobile phone GPU...), I don't see anything that can potentially use 4GB of RAM. And note: Chrome are multi-process. Meaning each tab can consume 4GB of RAM if it wants to, as each tab is a process, similarly for Firefox.

 

You are not going to be doing video editing either, the CPU is too slow, even for a native ARM64 compiled program.

 

The system should be capable of (this is all on paper. We will know once devices are out):

• Running full Office suits.
• Running your favorite web browser and deliver decent performance (similar to a high-end phone if is natively compiled).
• Play music including high quality FLAC files, and music streaming while multi-tasking.
• Playing YouTube and 4K videos.
• Do image editing for non large scale projects.
• Play mobile style games, and some older DirectX PC titles

Nothing here needs anything that 64-bit delivers... And again, that is assuming you are running 32-bit Win32 programs, and not install native ARM64 programs.

 

Quote

I'm more interested to see a new x86 smartphone in future maybe.

We already had. ASUS did one (and probably other manufactures). They ran Android. Performance was meh, and battery life was crap, and you had a warm phone.

 

 

 

Quote

Once they achieve better efficiency for a phone. Having full Win 64 bit and being dockable to leverage PC powerful hardware. It'd be great. 

Maybe like Surface Phone what it could/should be. 

We would, but Intel killing Atom so that hope is gone. What you'll get is Windows 10 on ARM with CShell (replaces Shell32), where Win32 emulation layer is not there, or will only enable itself when the phone is docked in "Continuum mode" (probably due to the power requirements, and the fact that most Win32 programs will not be usable on a phone screen.

 

Here is a rough idea how it would look:

 

I tried to resize Steam, and it doesn't allow me. So the content would be cut.

Imagine using the above on your phone (assuming your monitor is not a TV), try and imagine your finger interacting with anything above. Oh and the top menu of Paint.net is cut. You can't access "Adjustment" and "Effect" menu. And that is not counting the high-DPI issue coming into play.

 

So yea, I doubt you'll have Win32 support when in "phone mode"

 

[Doobeedoo]

32 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Well I think that is the eventual aim, once the slower ARM chips can run Windows 10 for ARM.

However, I don't see any software that you want to run that need more than 4GB of RAM. I am looking through my system, and beside games (which won't run on it.. I mean its a mobile phone GPU...), I don't see anything that can potentially use 4GB of RAM. And note: Chrome are multi-process. Meaning each tab can consume 4GB of RAM if it wants to, as each tab is a process, similarly for Firefox.

 

You are not going to be doing video editing either, the CPU is too slow, even for a native ARM64 compiled program.

 

The system should be capable of (this is all on paper. We will know once devices are out):

• Running full Office suits.
• Running your favorite web browser and deliver decent performance (similar to a high-end phone if is natively compiled).
• Play music including high quality FLAC files, and music streaming while multi-tasking.
• Playing YouTube and 4K videos.
• Do image editing for non large scale projects.
• Play mobile style games, and some older DirectX PC titles

Nothing here needs anything that 64-bit delivers... And again, that is assuming you are running 32-bit Win32 programs, and not install native ARM64 programs.

Even my phone with like closed apps uses like 2GB more or less just running being idle though. Even when I did built in clean memory. I mean I can use dozen apps, having Twitch stream in floating window while browsing multiple tabs. It can load to max memory with many stuff open, some need to refresh, some not. But that's a phone, small. But something like a laptop I'd do more multitasking. Personally I don't use Chrome also Firefox Quantum is 4 tabs 1 process now? Using Opera though.

Still, I think that dual-core, 4GB, non 64bit should die off for anything laptop-like though. Cause you're better of with much better alternatives anyway. Or as said before, be very very cheap.

32 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

We already had. ASUS did one (and probably other manufactures). They ran Android. Performance was meh, and battery life was crap, and you had a warm phone.

 

I know, and yeah it was meh, but I was excited it was a start. Then they stopped doing it. Maybe AMD tries out with their APU/SoC for a smartphone, when they were asked about it they did say no plans at the time. But with their 25 x 20 energy efficiency initiative (25 times more energy efficiency by 2020) then they may consider something on a smartphone side.

33 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

We would, but Intel killing Atom so that hope is gone. What you'll get is Windows 10 on ARM with CShell (replaces Shell32), where Win32 emulation layer is not there, or will only enable itself when the phone is docked in "Continuum mode" (probably due to the power requirements, and the fact that most Win32 programs will not be usable on a phone screen.

 

Here is a rough idea how it would look:

 

I tried to resize Steam, and it doesn't allow me. So the content would be cut.

Imagine using the above on your phone (assuming your monitor is not a TV), try and imagine your finger interacting with anything above. Oh and the top menu of Paint.net is cut. You can't access "Adjustment" and "Effect" menu. And that is not counting the high-DPI issue coming into play.

 

So yea, I doubt you'll have Win32 support when in "phone mode"

Steam is a problem it self even, they will be releasing a update to tackle higher DPI so yey.

I see the point, but it can be done. Maybe not for like long use, but just for the sake of being able to for a certain need on the go or whatever. Like every first tap being like a magnifier "bubble" potentially with a drag too. So you don't zoom in and out on entire program all the time. Menus being swipeable and stuff like that.

Definitely not making it like a main thing, but just to get by per say if you'd want/need certain program from times to times in "phone mode" before being docked. Also still have regular phone app support too.

 

Or if not Win32 support in "phone mode" have a full Windows OS on it as a Windows To Go so you have your stuff with you on a phone and when docket like at home it uses PC hardware. Also just support regular phone apps MS/Google store when just using a phone. 

Anyway, we'll see what happens in time I guess  .

[Zodiark1593]

5 hours ago, Trixanity said:

Actually Kryo was slower than A57 in integer performance. It was that bad. At the same time Qualcomm seems intent on offloading floating point to co-processors making the incredible float of Kryo irrelevant. That combined with no ambition in CPU performance means they can save some time and money by just licensing designs and focusing on other things. I wouldn't be surprised to know if they had stopped working on custom architectures entirely. ARM designs are 'good enough' and I think they're confident enough in ARM's roadmap with ARM supposedly working on something big for next year although it's too vague to get one's hopes up.

The odd bit is that Kryo is also substantially larger than even the Cortex A72, suggesting something fairly wide, or an excessively deep pipeline. I'm curious to see exactly what decisions were made, though Qualcomm is even more tight lipped than Apple about it's architectures. 

 

Thankfully, the GPU is somewhat the redeeming factor of the SD820, if it wasn't getting choked to death that is. 

[Guest]

I remember seeing a while back the possibilities of x86 64bit emulation coming eventually. (Be it an update or reserved for stronger SOCs) Now I can't find where I found it, it might have just been a random rumor or it was something the devs discussed.

[Trixanity]

1 hour ago, Zodiark1593 said:

The odd bit is that Kryo is also substantially larger than even the Cortex A72, suggesting something fairly wide, or an excessively deep pipeline. I'm curious to see exactly what decisions were made, though Qualcomm is even more tight lipped than Apple about it's architectures. 

 

Thankfully, the GPU is somewhat the redeeming factor of the SD820, if it wasn't getting choked to death that is. 

Officially Qualcomm says they look at the best option for each generation. That doesn't say much. Outwardly it would seem that their internal designs are inferior to ARM's. However it could just as well mean they've stopped working on designs as I mentioned earlier or they may have started over with something that isn't a lopsided FP-heavy design. Kryo may have been their Bulldozer in the sense it wasn't salvageable when held up against the computing needs of modern devices. Qualcomm, however, has the advantage of being able to fall back on ARM designs which AMD did not. Perhaps in a year or two Qualcomm will blow our minds with an incredible design (don't hold your breath though).

 

Keep in mind that while wide designs are generally good, they don't necessarily guarantee performance. There is more to it than that. An example is Samsung's Mongoose cores. The first two designs were wider than ARM and Qualcomm designs but any performance advantage never truly surfaced. Arguably the cores were crippled by other factors anyway but I admit I don't know all the details.

 

Qualcomm made the bargain of the century when they picked up AMD's mobile GPU business. Of course that was years ago but the IP and engineers were obviously very well positioned and their prowess shows. The efficiency is absolutely incredible and the actual performance is usually at the top of the charts.

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

Even my phone with like closed apps uses like 2GB more or less just running being idle though. Even when I did built in clean memory. I mean I can use dozen apps, having Twitch stream in floating window while browsing multiple tabs. It can load to max memory with many stuff open, some need to refresh, some not. But that's a phone, small.

But something like a laptop I'd do more multitasking. Personally I don't use Chrome also Firefox Quantum is 4 tabs 1 process now? Using Opera though.

Still, I think that dual-core, 4GB, non 64bit should die off for anything laptop-like though.

Hmm, I am sure I follow you...

The Windows 10 for ARM and CPU it support are both 64-bit. You can run ARM 64-bit apps just fine on it.

It can support system with 2GB, 4GB, 6GB, 8, 12, 16, 128, 256GB of RAM to whatever arbitrary value Microsoft wants to official support (assuming no chip limitation)

 

Only the "desktop" traditional Windows compiled programs for Intel/AMD CPUs (x86) can only in 32-bit (at least, so far) due to the emulation layer limitation of Windows 10 for ARM.

 

Keep in mind that your phone keeps programs in RAM when you don't use them (well, it also has a page file, which gets used when you are low in RAM). They are just put into a suspended state, so the CPU just ignores them until you bring them back in front. If you have an app playing music on the back, the app is actually not playing the music. It registered a service when you installed it, and the service handle the music. This is why some apps, like video players like Youtube, pauses your video when you switch app. So if you did all this with 4GB of RAM, it shows you that it is plenty, but that is beside the point. That is a different topic. We are not saying if a 4GB of RAM system would be enough. We are saying, is 64-bit is truly needed for the average consumer these system will be the target off.

 

 

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

Steam is a problem it self even, they will be releasing a update to tackle higher DPI so yey.

All the Win32 programs with issues are a problem in itself. It can be done, but it is hard. UWP aims to make that simple.

Office 2016 is a Win32 app and it support everything (well it's aim is not phones, but rather touch screen tablet, laptop, and desktop), for example.

 

 

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

I see the point, but it can be done. Maybe not for like long use, but just for the sake of being able to for a certain need on the go or whatever. Like every first tap being like a magnifier "bubble" potentially with a drag too. So you don't zoom in and out on entire program all the time. Menus being swipeable and stuff like that.

If you have Windows Pro on you PC, setup remote desktop, and get your phone out and install remote desktop app there, and remote desktop. That is what you'll get (minus the desktop, and image the app being full screen). Even on those rare moments, it would be frustrating to actually use as you walk.

 

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

Or if not Win32 support in "phone mode" have a full Windows OS on it as a Windows To Go so you have your stuff with you on a phone and when docket like at home it uses PC hardware. Also just support regular phone apps MS/Google store when just using a phone.

Yea, we will see what this whole Project Andromeda is from Microsoft.

[AlTech]

4 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Well I think that is the eventual aim, once the slower ARM chips can run Windows 10 for ARM.

However, I don't see any software that you want to run that need more than 4GB of RAM. I am looking through my system, and beside games (which won't run on it.. I mean its a mobile phone GPU...), I don't see anything that can potentially use 4GB of RAM. And note: Chrome are multi-process. Meaning each tab can consume 4GB of RAM if it wants to, as each tab is a process, similarly for Firefox.

 

You are not going to be doing video editing either, the CPU is too slow, even for a native ARM64 compiled program.

Why? An iPad Pro can edit videos. Why not a Snapdragon 845?

Quote

The system should be capable of (this is all on paper. We will know once devices are out):

• Running full Office suits.

Well that's awfully nice. 

 

Does it iron office Tuxedos as well ?

 

/S /joke

 

*Suites

Quote

• Running your favorite web browser and deliver decent performance (similar to a high-end phone if is natively compiled).

I love how this is a feature being bragged about . It just shows how bad W10 on ARM will be performance wise.

Quote

• Play music including high quality FLAC files, and music streaming while multi-tasking.

Cool.

Quote

• Playing YouTube and 4K videos.

Cool.

Quote

• Do image editing for non large scale projects.
• Play mobile style games, and some older DirectX PC titles

Ouch. That's not great.

Quote

Nothing here needs anything that 64-bit delivers... And again, that is assuming you are running 32-bit Win32 programs, and not install native ARM64 programs.

Then what's the whole point of this? It seems like so many compromises just to enable ARM to run on desktop windows 10.

 

[Doobeedoo]

9 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Hmm, I am sure I follow you...

The Windows 10 for ARM and CPU it support are both 64-bit. You can run ARM 64-bit apps just fine on it.

It can support system with 2GB, 4GB, 6GB, 8, 12, 16, 128, 256GB of RAM to whatever arbitrary value Microsoft wants to official support (assuming no chip limitation)

 

Only the "desktop" traditional Windows compiled programs for Intel/AMD CPUs (x86) can only in 32-bit (at least, so far) due to the emulation layer limitation of Windows 10 for ARM.

 

Keep in mind that your phone keeps programs in RAM when you don't use them (well, it also has a page file, which gets used when you are low in RAM). They are just put into a suspended state, so the CPU just ignores them until you bring them back in front. If you have an app playing music on the back, the app is actually not playing the music. It registered a service when you installed it, and the service handle the music. This is why some apps, like video players like Youtube, pauses your video when you switch app. So if you did all this with 4GB of RAM, it shows you that it is plenty, but that is beside the point. That is a different topic. We are not saying if a 4GB of RAM system would be enough. We are saying, is 64-bit is truly needed for the average consumer these system will be the target off.

 

 

Yeah was thinking about emulation layer limitation of W10 for ARM though. Urm I get the point that average consumer doing simple daily tasks wouldn't need 64-bit but maybe good to push it in a way, like 'future proofing' maybe. It looks to me like using some older DirectX than DX12 for future games for example. The full transition to 64-bit really is slow dragging legacy stuff. Before W10 was released I though they'd ditch 32-bit all together. But yeah, gotta support those ancient XP ATM machines one day. 

9 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

All the Win32 programs with issues are a problem in itself. It can be done, but it is hard. UWP aims to make that simple.

Office 2016 is a Win32 app and it support everything (well it's aim is not phones, but rather touch screen tablet, laptop, and desktop), for example.

True, aside UWP I really wonder when MS will release the update for higher-DPI support in general that they've been talking about. Cause 96 though...
Office 2016 does work very nice.

9 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

If you have Windows Pro on you PC, setup remote desktop, and get your phone out and install remote desktop app there, and remote desktop. That is what you'll get (minus the desktop, and image the app being full screen). Even on those rare moments, it would be frustrating to actually use as you walk.

Yeah, I did so sometimes, it feels janky and delayed. But yeah it's remotely.

9 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Yea, we will see what this whole Project Andromeda is from Microsoft.

Right, it may be a while for it, but it's supposed to be like modular and scalable OS of sort for devices ye?

[Sauron]

Eh, honestly I'd just run Linux if I had a full blown arm based desktop or laptop. The lack of games and support for 64 bit windows programs kind of takes everything I could want windows for out of the equation.

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, Trixanity said:

Officially Qualcomm says they look at the best option for each generation. That doesn't say much. Outwardly it would seem that their internal designs are inferior to ARM's. However it could just as well mean they've stopped working on designs as I mentioned earlier or they may have started over with something that isn't a lopsided FP-heavy design. Kryo may have been their Bulldozer in the sense it wasn't salvageable when held up against the computing needs of modern devices. Qualcomm, however, has the advantage of being able to fall back on ARM designs which AMD did not. Perhaps in a year or two Qualcomm will blow our minds with an incredible design (don't hold your breath though).

 

Keep in mind that while wide designs are generally good, they don't necessarily guarantee performance. There is more to it than that. An example is Samsung's Mongoose cores. The first two designs were wider than ARM and Qualcomm designs but any performance advantage never truly surfaced. Arguably the cores were crippled by other factors anyway but I admit I don't know all the details.

 

Qualcomm made the bargain of the century when they picked up AMD's mobile GPU business. Of course that was years ago but the IP and engineers were obviously very well positioned and their prowess shows. The efficiency is absolutely incredible and the actual performance is usually at the top of the charts.

When we got Core 2 Duo, the performance benefits of the wider architecture were immediately realized (along with shorter pipeline) without special optimizations. On my own phone (SD821), with a specially optimized browser, Kraken scores in the low 2k range. With Chrome, it is in the middle 3k range. Chrome can utilize 8 cores very well btw, so octa core chips probably have the edge. So optimization magic?

 

On the other hand, the Cortex A73 is a narrower architecture, yet it is faster in integer than A57 and A72 (and Kryo), and is smaller and less power hungry to boot. Something quite contradictory to what Intel (Conroe) and Apple (Cyclone) have both displayed.

 

So tbh, I don't really know what's going on, whether software really needs to be optimized to utilize wider cores, or if there's some other factor (pipeline length, branch prediction?) that is holding back wider designs. Heck, Qualcomm hasn't even specified how wide Kryo is. Speaking of which, Samsung is also apparently putting together a cpu design as wide as what Apple has done.

[GoodBytes]

29 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Why? An iPad Pro can edit videos. Why not a Snapdragon 845?

I meant the pro tools and edit 4K footage and such

 

29 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Well that's awfully nice. 

Does it iron office Tuxedos as well ?

/S /joke

 

[GoodBytes]

21 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Yeah was thinking about emulation layer limitation of W10 for ARM though. Urm I get the point that average consumer doing simple daily tasks wouldn't need 64-bit but maybe good to push it in a way, like 'future proofing' maybe.

Well maybe it is the works, we don't know. Or MS wants to see if their is an actual demand by the target market, and if it's worth it, invest in it.

 

 

21 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

True, aside UWP I really wonder when MS will release the update for higher-DPI support in general that they've been talking about.

They have. App using modern'isj MS frameworks support it. Devs only needs to do some fine adjustments to get the best experience if even needed. But the problem is mass number of apps don't. They use custom ones like Adobe software and Steam, or use others that still today doesn't support high-DPI and have no plan to, as support is gone.

 

 

21 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Right, it may be a while for it, but it's supposed to be like modular and scalable OS of sort for devices ye?

Apparently

[Nowak]

Why is Microsoft still focusing on tablets so much? The tablet fad is dying. Even Apple's gonna have to face that reality some day.

[Trixanity]

26 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

When we got Core 2 Duo, the performance benefits of the wider architecture were immediately realized (along with shorter pipeline) without special optimizations. On my own phone (SD821), with a specially optimized browser, Kraken scores in the low 2k range. With Chrome, it is in the middle 3k range. Chrome can utilize 8 cores very well btw, so octa core chips probably have the edge. So optimization magic?

 

On the other hand, the Cortex A73 is a narrower architecture, yet it is faster in integer than A57 and A72 (and Kryo), and is smaller and less power hungry to boot. Something quite contradictory to what Intel (Conroe) and Apple (Cyclone) have both displayed.

 

So tbh, I don't really know what's going on, whether software really needs to be optimized to utilize wider cores, or if there's some other factor (pipeline length, branch prediction?) that is holding back wider designs. Heck, Qualcomm hasn't even specified how wide Kryo is. Speaking of which, Samsung is also apparently putting together a cpu design as wide as what Apple has done.

I think it might be partly software but I also think a lot of uncore stuff affects utilization. Not to mention the architecture itself. Width is just one part of the equation.

 

A72 is 3-wide, A73 is 2-wide and Samsung's M1 and M2 cores were 4-wide. Their M3 will be 6-wide. That's indeed approaching Apple territory. I can't recall if the width is known.

 

I seem to recall reading the memory controller and cache structure resulting in some brutal performance deficits on Samsung's cores. So there's plenty opportunity to cripple a wide core design but it's a decent first (and second) attempt. Samsung is apparently really pulling out all the stops this year and have worked hard to eliminate all bottlenecks. I just wish we'd see a wider audience for Exynos so that competition in ARM space starts rolling again. Samsung apparently also have a GPU in the works for 2019 as they want to ditch ARM to better compete with Qualcomm.

[Zodiark1593]

31 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

I think it might be partly software but I also think a lot of uncore stuff affects utilization. Not to mention the architecture itself. Width is just one part of the equation.

 

A72 is 3-wide, A73 is 2-wide and Samsung's M1 and M2 cores were 4-wide. Their M3 will be 6-wide. That's indeed approaching Apple territory. I can't recall if the width is known.

 

I seem to recall reading the memory controller and cache structure resulting in some brutal performance deficits on Samsung's cores. So there's plenty opportunity to cripple a wide core design but it's a decent first (and second) attempt. Samsung is apparently really pulling out all the stops this year and have worked hard to eliminate all bottlenecks. I just wish we'd see a wider audience for Exynos so that competition in ARM space starts rolling again. Samsung apparently also have a GPU in the works for 2019 as they want to ditch ARM to better compete with Qualcomm.

Apple also gives their cores a giant plop of L3 cache, now that I think of it. The SD820 only gets about 2 MB of L2 total, 1.5 MB for the "big" cores, a mere 512k for the "Little" cores. 

[Coaxialgamer]

What i'm wondering is :

efficiency of ARM > efficiency loss of x86 emulation

[ScratchCat]

1 hour ago, Trixanity said:

I think it might be partly software but I also think a lot of uncore stuff affects utilization. Not to mention the architecture itself. Width is just one part of the equation.

 

A72 is 3-wide, A73 is 2-wide and Samsung's M1 and M2 cores were 4-wide. Their M3 will be 6-wide. That's indeed approaching Apple territory. I can't recall if the width is known.

 

I seem to recall reading the memory controller and cache structure resulting in some brutal performance deficits on Samsung's cores. So there's plenty opportunity to cripple a wide core design but it's a decent first (and second) attempt. Samsung is apparently really pulling out all the stops this year and have worked hard to eliminate all bottlenecks. I just wish we'd see a wider audience for Exynos so that competition in ARM space starts rolling again. Samsung apparently also have a GPU in the works for 2019 as they want to ditch ARM to better compete with Qualcomm.

Leaked 'Benchmarks' (*cough geekbench cough*) seem to show that the M3 cores provide impressive single thread performance performance, hence a failure of a chip is unlikely. Going from ~2000 points at 2.4GHz to 3600 at 1.8GHz seems to be a bit too much , although Geekbench may be reporting the frequency of the little cores.

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s9_exynos_9810_geekbench-news-29594.php

 

If we were to see an Exynos 9810 in a Galaxy Tab 2-in-1 Windows on ARM would be much more attractive, pushing into the territory of older ULV chips. This coupled with the fact that the chip is designed to be use in a phone and so will most likely have a TDP of ~5W should allow for cool, long lasting devices which could only be possible otherwise with Atom of Core-Y chips.

[Trixanity]

23 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Apple also gives their cores a giant plop of L3 cache, now that I think of it. The SD820 only gets about 2 MB of L2 total, 1.5 MB for the "big" cores, a mere 512k for the "Little" cores. 

I think all processors this year will have L3 cache due to the move away from discrete core clusters. Both big and small will now share the L3 cache. There is even a sort of L4 cache in Snapdragon 845 sitting between the core configuration and memory controller. This also hints at the downside. The private caches are smaller and the memory controller is further from the cores resulting in increased latency. So they've added these relatively big caches to offset smaller private caches and they want to reduce the need to access DRAM to hide the added latency. This design is very much a double edged sword. The latencies are smaller than before on the lower levels but are now higher at the higher levels. That's quite a trade-off but I think cache hierarchy aside that there must be some performance benefits for the cores themselves from unifying the clusters. At the very least it's enabling more flexible core configurations.

[Tieox]

Their is already a wealth of tablets running Atom chips with decent battery life, but full Windows 10, where does a ARM cutdown Win10 system fit in? 

[Trixanity]

33 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

Leaked 'Benchmarks' (*cough geekbench cough*) seem to show that the M3 cores provide impressive single thread performance performance, hence a failure of a chip is unlikely. Going from ~2000 points at 2.4GHz to 3600 at 1.8GHz seems to be a bit too much , although Geekbench may be reporting the frequency of the little cores.

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s9_exynos_9810_geekbench-news-29594.php

 

If we were to see an Exynos 9810 in a Galaxy Tab 2-in-1 Windows on ARM would be much more attractive, pushing into the territory of older ULV chips. This coupled with the fact that the chip is designed to be use in a phone and so will most likely have a TDP of ~5W should allow for cool, long lasting devices which could only be possible otherwise with Atom of Core-Y chips.

Samsung are promising twice the single threaded performance going from M2 to M3. I'm not sure if it's the biggest increase we've seen from one generation to next on modern processors but it sounds like it. I suspect geekbench sucks at reporting accurate clock speeds as usual. They do have a tendency to report small core frequency if I recall correctly.

 

Samsung claimed 2.9 GHz on the M3 cores but I suspect that was a reference design showcase. I don't think we'll see that in a phone (S9 that is). Not to mention how much that would throttle. Samsung has yet to match Qualcomm in absolute efficiency. We'll see what they've come up with when someone hopefully picks up an S9 and test it properly (which might be months down the line if Anandtech keeps their usual pace).

 

I'm not sure if Qualcomm signed an exclusivity deal with Microsoft or if Microsoft's work with ARM on Windows is intimately tied with Qualcomm. So even if Exynos became mainstream on Android we might not see anything on Windows. I don't recall seeing any other ARM chip designers announce support for Windows.

[Zodiark1593]

48 minutes ago, Kierax said:

Their is already a wealth of tablets running Atom chips with decent battery life, but full Windows 10, where does a ARM cutdown Win10 system fit in? 

A slow transition over to ARM and UWP? As we're already emulating at Atom performance, native ARM performance is bound to be far higher, perhaps even approaching Intel's Core-Y chips. Cortex A-75 is coming soon as well. While I don't know the details, it's Meltdown vulnerability points to a more aggressive branch prediction capability, and possibly a wider architecture than seen in previous ARM designs.

 

To be successful in the long run with these ARM devices, Microsoft will have to push developers over to UWP to utilize native performance, otherwise these devices will prove no better than anything Atom based at much worse pricing. As to whether or not these devices will gain enough marketshare to convince developers remains to be seen. Presumably, Win33 capability is there to aid in getting more immediate marketshare, and in time provide incentive to develop for UWP.

 

In a sense, this is mirroring the beginning of what Apple has done in their transition away from PowerPC. Though the scale is quite different, and poses a much greater challenge if moving to ARM is the goal (of which, I'm only speculating).

[Drak3]

59 minutes ago, Kierax said:

Their is already a wealth of tablets running Atom chips with decent battery life, but full Windows 10, where does a ARM cutdown Win10 system fit in? 

New device models with updated features.

[Tieox]

31 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

New device models with updated features.

I am interested in what benefits it will have, I help setup many low end laptops/netbooks/tablets for people who just use them for social media/YouTube/Gmail.

 

Should I continue to recommend basic Atom chips for such tasks or give serious consideration to these is my primary thought right now.