The Beginning of the End – Surface Pro X Review

[RILEYISMYNAME]

The Surface Pro X represents the best of what Windows 10 on Arm has to offer. Unfortunately, the best needs to get better.

 

 

 

Buy Surface Pro X:

On Amazon: https://geni.us/DjbV4jZ

On Microsoft Store: https://geni.us/ysDAW

[GZ0]

You are propagating a common misunderstanding. There's nothing to say the ARM processors can't be as fast as x86 processors. In fact, because they're more efficient, they should theoretically be MORE powerful. The problem is that, as you mentioned, x86 code can't run on ARM. With pretty much all consumer and professional desktop software written for x86, there just isn't any demand for powerful ARM processors in the desktop space.

CISC(x86) is only a thing because people wanted instructions to do more advanced operations back when most code was written in assembly. As in example, this is how to perform a multiplication on x86:
 

mul MEMORY_ADDRESS_1, MEMORY_ADDRESS_2

And this is how you do it on ARM:
 

load REGISTER_A, MEMORY_ADDRESS_1
load REGISTER_B, MEMORY_ADDRESS_2
mul REGISTER_A, REGISTER_B
store MEMORY_ADDRESS_1, REGISTER_A

Notably, the result is the same, and the ARM code is actually faster, and has more room for compiler optimizations. Even more troubling for x86, adding instructions either takes up silicon, because you actually have to build these special instructions into the hardware, or wastes time during execution, because you have to translate them into instructions the CPU actually has physical "paths" for. This is the path Intel and AMD have both gone in recent years, which means that the actual processor is actually pretty much a RISC-like design, but with a huge de-compiler written in microcode which translates the CISC instructions the CPU doesn't actually support. This wastes both time and power, but is still better than actually trying to implement all of the instructions they tell developers they support.

Now that pretty much no one is writing software in assembly, instead using higher level programming languages, there really aren't any advantages to the CISC architecture. Other than a shitload of software not being compiled for more efficient alternatives, and decades of work to optimize libraries around x86.

Notably, in the server space, IBM's Power9 is very much competitive with x86.That's a RISC architecture, just like ARM.

I'd be interested to see how usable Linux is on this machine, since there should be way more compatible software available... Hint, hint

[Leslieann]

This will fail just like Surface RT and for the same reason.

 

Laymen have no idea what ARM is they just want their programs to work.

[Hunter259]

Edit: Very good paper on just this. https://research.cs.wisc.edu/vertical/papers/2013/hpca13-isa-power-struggles.pdf

 

Quote

Notably, the result is the same, and the ARM code is actually faster, and has more room for compiler optimizations. Even more troubling for x86, adding instructions either takes up silicon, because you actually have to build these special instructions into the hardware, or wastes time during execution, because you have to translate them into instructions the CPU actually has physical "paths" for. This is the path Intel and AMD have both gone in recent years, which means that the actual processor is actually pretty much a RISC-like design, but with a huge de-compiler written in microcode which translates the CISC instructions the CPU doesn't actually support. This wastes both time and power, but is still better than actually trying to implement all of the instructions they tell developers they support.

While are correct that ARM can be powerful, this jumble of RISC vs CISC has been disproven for years. The engineering of the cores matter far more than your instruction set. ARM code isn't any faster than CISC code. They both get broken down into microops. x86 uses a cache to speed it's decoding up while, to my knowledge, ARM does not. It's around a 2% penalty but is made up for in other areas. What ARM has done is designed extremely good low power logic. Intel is still using the base design of the Pentium 3, albeit HEAVILY modified. Fun fact: Both architectures have instructions that look and act like each other. It's not a big deal.

[caincha]

Wasn't this what Apple did with the 12" MacBook back in 2015 as in using the A mobile chip but running a full version of MacOS?!

[Granular]

The future is RISCV

[Otto_iii]

please cut your fingernails next time.  Otherwise interesting review given its likely ARM and others will be trying to get into the market more and more in the next few years.