Qualcomm and Microsoft have an exclusivity deal for Windows on ARM, but that could change soon

[BondiBlue]

Summary

New information suggests that Microsoft and Qualcomm have an exclusivity deal regarding Windows on ARM, which could be a potential reason for why Microsoft hasn't officially made Windows available for Apple Silicon Macs. However, sources familiar with the agreement have said that the deal could expire soon, opening the door for more ARM based Windows devices. 

 

Quotes

Quote

"Qualcomm didn’t just start building PC chips hoping that Microsoft would compile Windows to support it. No, these two companies worked together to make it happen. Because of that, Qualcomm gets to enjoy a bit of exclusivity."

 

My thoughts

I would personally love for Windows to be able to run on more ARM devices, especially Macs with Apple Silicon chips. Those SoCs have shown very impressive performance (especially for their power consumption), and having more software available would only be a benefit. Right now Windows cannot officially run on AS Macs outside of virtualization with Insider Preview builds of Windows, but hopefully this can change in the future. 

 

Sources

XDA-Developers

[Bombastinator]

38 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

Summary

New information suggests that Microsoft and Qualcomm have an exclusivity deal regarding Windows on ARM, which could be a potential reason for why Microsoft hasn't officially made Windows available for Apple Silicon Macs. However, sources familiar with the agreement have said that the deal could expire soon, opening the door for more ARM based Windows devices. 

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

I would personally love for Windows to be able to run on more ARM devices, especially Macs with Apple Silicon chips. Those SoCs have shown very impressive performance (especially for their power consumption), and having more software available would only be a benefit. Right now Windows cannot officially run on AS Macs outside of virtualization with Insider Preview builds of Windows, but hopefully this can change in the future. 

 

Sources

XDA-Developers

Windows has issues regarding OSX as a system.  Windows has been the middle ground between OSX and KDE/GNOME stuff as far as learning curve goes for a long for a long time.  This might explain why the m1pro/max has so many game compatibility problems.  It was a weird rather unexplainable behavior.  Perhaps this explains it.  They’re expecting Microsoft to fix them when the cap pops. Not being allowed to market something doesn’t mean they can’t work on it. 

[Video Beagle]

8 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Not being allowed to market something doesn’t mean they can’t work on it. 

There's money being left on the table...you can be sure that both companies are working on things to get it if/when they're able.

[RejZoR]

They worked together and did an incredibly bad job at it. Both, Microsoft and Qualcomm. Microsoft for trying for a decade to bring Windows to ARM and it's still garbage meanwhile Apple did the same in just 1 year and it actually works well even if there are some issues. And Qualcomm for releasing underwhelming chips that in combination with garbage Windows for ARM performed like absolute poo and all devices with them were horrendously expensive compared to AMD or Intel versions with similar specs on paper.

[Brooksie359]

8 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

They worked together and did an incredibly bad job at it. Both, Microsoft and Qualcomm. Microsoft for trying for a decade to bring Windows to ARM and it's still garbage meanwhile Apple did the same in just 1 year and it actually works well even if there are some issues. And Qualcomm for releasing underwhelming chips that in combination with garbage Windows for ARM performed like absolute poo and all devices with them were horrendously expensive compared to AMD or Intel versions with similar specs on paper.

To be fair saying Apple only took one year to switch to ARM sorta misleading. I mean Apple happens to have all the things required to make a system that runs on ARM based processors. First and foremost would be they actually build their own cpus and have been for a long time so they can actually build their cpu around their OS. This is key because the biggest reason why the transition was so smooth was their cpu design had the issues of transition in mind. The second big thing is that they already have extensive experience with operating systems that run on ARM in the form of ios so they certainly no what they are doing more than Microsoft when it comes to building an operating system around ARM. It basically seems to me like Apple's history sorta built toward moving to ARM. Microsoft on the other hand simply created and os that ran on ARM and had it run on laptops with Qualcomms phone cpus in them. They simply put alot less thought into imo. 

[Spindel]

My bet is that MS have working builds for AS in their computer labs. Kind of a bummer that they’ve locked themselves in if a deal with qualcomm is true. 
 

[Video Beagle]

18 minutes ago, Spindel said:

My bet is that MS have working builds for AS in their computer labs. Kind of a bummer that they’ve locked themselves in if a deal with qualcomm is true. 
 

I've said since last year that they have builds and Apple has a Bootcamp like set up, or some kind of super hypervisor ...they even said as much, saying the ball is in MSoft's court.

[Spindel]

1 minute ago, Video Beagle said:

I've said since last year that they have builds and Apple has a Bootcamp like set up, or some kind of super hypervisor ...they even said as much, saying the ball is in MSoft's court.

I interpretation of Apples statement was more that Apple doesn’t hinder other OSs being installed on AS macs and not that they neccesairly have made a bootcamp like driver package. 

[Video Beagle]

1 minute ago, Spindel said:

I interpretation of Apples statement was more that Apple doesn’t hinder other OSs being installed on AS macs and not that they neccesairly have made a bootcamp like driver package. 

Apple's always gonna Apple and want people to have a "good" user experience, so I'm pretty sure they have something to make things easy.

[leadeater]

51 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

The second big thing is that they already have extensive experience with operating systems that run on ARM in the form of ios so they certainly no what they are doing more than Microsoft when it comes to building an operating system around ARM.

Hey come on, Microsoft had Windows Phone for a long time which ran on ARM... 

 

Seriously though I actually do like Windows Phone OS and it's super snappy, just devoid of literally anything not Outlook and the calculator app lol.

[leadeater]

33 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

Apple's always gonna Apple and want people to have a "good" user experience, so I'm pretty sure they have something to make things easy.

Bootcamp in the past is a very different thing to now, a Mac device running Intel CPUs and all the other trappings of a x86 laptop enjoyed all the benefits of being just that. Apple never wrote any of the major drivers for Windows in Bootcamp, Bootcamp was primarily a tool to create the partition and prep the system to dual boot and as a delivery tool for all the possibly required drivers when in Windows.

 

You never actually needed Bootcamp to get Windows on a Mac device nor needed it to make it run optimally compared to not using it.

 

Apple Silicon Macs are entirely different, Apple HAS to do something and that namely being actually create Windows drivers for their hardware. I highly doubt Apple has actually bothered to do that and will only do so when Microsoft reaches out just like they do to Intel and AMD etc. There is absolutely no reason for Apple to spend any amount of resources on an OS edition of Windows that cannot be purchased retail, only accessible to consumers via OEM devices and is proven to have a poor ecosystem and support. There's no way Apple would want to attach their name to something like that.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

To be fair saying Apple only took one year to switch to ARM sorta misleading. I mean Apple happens to have all the things required to make a system that runs on ARM based processors. First and foremost would be they actually build their own cpus and have been for a long time so they can actually build their cpu around their OS. This is key because the biggest reason why the transition was so smooth was their cpu design had the issues of transition in mind. The second big thing is that they already have extensive experience with operating systems that run on ARM in the form of ios so they certainly no what they are doing more than Microsoft when it comes to building an operating system around ARM. It basically seems to me like Apple's history sorta built toward moving to ARM. Microsoft on the other hand simply created and os that ran on ARM and had it run on laptops with Qualcomms phone cpus in them. They simply put alot less thought into imo. 

It doesn't matter. No one cares if Apple was planning this for 10 years. The fact is, when it was out and ready for consumers it was pretty painless. Now look at Windows for ARM. I don't care if it was 20 years in the making and 10 with the users, it was either way too long and too broken. Besides, saying that is kind of wrong. Apple didn't plan 20 years ahead to go with ARM. They did the R&D in much shorter time and thanks to closed ecosystem everyone hates so much, they pulled it off while Microsoft is still scratching it's head what to do 10 years later, releasing weird products like Surface Duo with Android. Which makes about as much sense as Apple releasing MacBookPro M1 with Windows 11... Many would like, but ignore the fact its excellent build is exclusive to MacOS because Windows for ARM is garbage and wouldn't take any advantage of M1. Not in ways MacOS does anyways.

[Doobeedoo]

Not like they were good devices or anything on performance level like Apple which they'll need to get to eventually so we'll see.

[Paul Thexton]

11 hours ago, leadeater said:

Seriously though I actually do like Windows Phone OS and it's super snappy, just devoid of literally anything not Outlook and the calculator app lol.

My dad had a windows phone for a while (I can’t remember which mfr/model) and to be fair I thought the same, responsive UI and actually a very nice screen. Just basically no apps, they were too late to the party really. 

[Paul Thexton]

11 hours ago, leadeater said:

You never actually needed Bootcamp to get Windows on a Mac device nor needed it to make it run optimally compared to not using it.

Yep. Whenever people say things like “bootcamp in to Windows” it made me go in to full Inspector Dreyfus eye twitch mode

 

 

Intel Macs = bog standard EFI dual booting.

 

Asahi Linux project is making good progress on M1 devices, I suspect the biggest proprietary challenge regarding Windows ARM on Apple Silicon will be writing something to drive the GPU for rendering. And then there’s the Secure Enclave as well should you want to use it for BitLocker (I have no idea if that’s even architecturally analogous to FileVault2)

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

Yep. Whenever people say things like “bootcamp in to Windows” it made me go in to full Inspector Dreyfus eye twitch mode

 

 

Intel Macs = bog standard EFI dual booting.

 

Asahi Linux project is making good progress on M1 devices, I suspect the biggest proprietary challenge regarding Windows ARM on Apple Silicon will be writing something to drive the GPU for rendering. And then there’s the Secure Enclave as well should you want to use it for BitLocker (I have no idea if that’s even architecturally analogous to FileVault2)

It was a pre rolled system with conveniences.  Like ways to use the keyboard and trackpad that worked fairly well.  There was also the methodology behind systems designed to shoehorn in another file system on a previously formatted drive.  It could all be done by someone with enough skill.  The problem was not everyone had it. Could it be done other ways? Sure.  But it was easy and worked OK.  

[hishnash]

11 hours ago, leadeater said:

Apple Silicon Macs are entirely different, Apple HAS to do something and that namely being actually create Windows drivers for their hardware. I highly doubt Apple has actually bothered to do that and will only do so when Microsoft reaches out just like they do to Intel and AMD etc. There is absolutely no reason for Apple to spend any amount of resources on an OS edition of Windows that cannot be purchased retail, only accessible to consumers via OEM devices and is proven to have a poor ecosystem and support. There's no way Apple would want to attach their name to something like that.

It would also need effort from MS, there are fundamental elements of the OS kernel that need to be adapted so that windows can boot these are low enough level that apple could not just write drivers for these windows needs to update how it reads the device tree to find the hardware otherwise it can't load the drivers for the hardware. It needs to be updated to understand the MMU etc. 

 

1 minute ago, Paul Thexton said:

And then there’s the Secure Enclave as well should you want to use it for BitLocker (I have no idea if that’s even architecturally analogous to FileVault2)

So the fact is like all the co-prosoros the OS for these is pre-loaded before macOS/linux/windows etc boot. Things like full disk encryption can be enabled at that level (your not getting bit locker but could have FileVault since that happens before the os boots). You also get secure boot for third party operating systems (since the user can self sign the kernels they trust secure boot for linux already works on M1).
 

 

3 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

I suspect the biggest proprietary challenge regarding Windows ARM on Apple Silicon will be writing something to drive the GPU for rendering.

Assuming this is done by apples driver time it depends on the level of GPU driver your looking for. Since apples GPUs are really really not designed to run DX12 there will likely be features of dx12 that are considered `required` that are very hard to implement. The linux project that is writing drivers has already noticed that apple have very clearly built their GPUs to match what is needed in metal or maybe better but ensured metal matches what they can build in the most power optimised way.  Even implementing VK support will require a lot of driver provided shader shims, it will also result in a large amount of the GPUs features going un-used features that are not present in VK or DX.  Supporting older higher level apis, OpenGL DX 11 and lower is simpler since it is easier for the driver to inject shims as the developer does not have low level access to the hardware in the same way.



 

[hishnash]

11 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

I suspect the biggest proprietary challenge regarding Windows ARM on Apple Silicon will be writing something to drive the GPU for rendering

Assuming apple is helping with this the gpu driver side of things is not the hardest part at all.  All the other things that need large updates to the windows kernel (not something apple can develop and ship as a driver) would be much harder. Things like how to talk to all the co-prososreos, how to read the device tree, how to handle power states etc all of these are things that need modifications to the windows kernel and can't be provided as a seperate driver (since to load the driver you need these things to be working first). 

[Paul Thexton]

1 minute ago, hishnash said:

Things like how to talk to all the co-prososreos, how to read the device tree, how to handle power states etc all of these are things that need modifications to the windows kernel and can't be provided as a seperate driver (since to load the driver you need these things to be working first). 

Honestly given the progress made by Asahi Linux in getting things up & running I still think that should be relatively straightforward for a company with Microsoft’s resources. 
 

The challenges you mentioned regarding Apple’s GPUs potentially missing things required for DX11/Vulkan will require much uglier and less optimal solutions. 

[hishnash]

41 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

The challenges you mentioned regarding Apple’s GPUs potentially missing things required for DX11/Vulkan will require much uglier and less optimal solutions. 

yer that's is what will be a issue, and a good fraction of the performance of these GPUs will end up being lost as DX/VK just do not expose those functions at all. (they could write custom extensions for these to expose them but so few devs would consider it as the install volume of windows on Macs woulds but such a small % of users).

Of course there are benefits Appels arc that could be exposed, they have for many years effectively had `direct storage` since the gpu really does share the memory address space with the cpu, ssd controller etc.  And apple have had hardware scheduling (quite a bit more advanced that what is on windows) for many many years on thier GPUs. Since any co-prosores on the die can send messages to others the GPU could call out to the NPU to issue AI upscaling calls sharing the address space of the render target. 

[Kisai]

On 11/23/2021 at 1:21 AM, leadeater said:

Hey come on, Microsoft had Windows Phone for a long time which ran on ARM... 

 

Seriously though I actually do like Windows Phone OS and it's super snappy, just devoid of literally anything not Outlook and the calculator app lol.

WindowsCE 2.0 would like a word with you, 1997 wants their ARM back.

 

In all seriousness, Microsoft made a seriously poor mistake with abandoning CE (Mobile) which the last version was Windows Phone 7(.8). As they basically dumped their majority market share in PDA's for their non-existent share in mp3-player-phones.

 

In hindsight they should have learned directly from Apple, The Zune was based on CE 6.0, and then never updated or upgraded. They released devices for 4 years and then left the market.

 

Apple has never "left a market" for having low market share. Apple has exited markets where it can't improve the devices beyond what already exists (such as WiFi routers), and who really wants a $399 external hard drive that operates at 5400RPM speeds over ethernet, in a time of SSD's that would need 64Gbits of bandwidth to access performatively.

 

 

[Brooksie359]

On 11/23/2021 at 5:15 AM, RejZoR said:

It doesn't matter. No one cares if Apple was planning this for 10 years. The fact is, when it was out and ready for consumers it was pretty painless. Now look at Windows for ARM. I don't care if it was 20 years in the making and 10 with the users, it was either way too long and too broken. Besides, saying that is kind of wrong. Apple didn't plan 20 years ahead to go with ARM. They did the R&D in much shorter time and thanks to closed ecosystem everyone hates so much, they pulled it off while Microsoft is still scratching it's head what to do 10 years later, releasing weird products like Surface Duo with Android. Which makes about as much sense as Apple releasing MacBookPro M1 with Windows 11... Many would like, but ignore the fact its excellent build is exclusive to MacOS because Windows for ARM is garbage and wouldn't take any advantage of M1. Not in ways MacOS does anyways.

Oh there is no doubt that regardless of  what Apple's advantages were they still actually had a clear plan and executed it very well. It's actually pretty unbelievable how well they pulled off the transition and it definitely makes Microsoft look pretty bad as it sorta shows what that transition should look like. Granted Microsoft looked bad even before Apple made their transition It's just that Apple's transition shows that it can be done a lot better and making the excuse of "there will always be growing pains" feel alot less warranted when there is an example of a transition with little growing pains. That being said I don't think Microsoft could pull off what Apple did because of the advantages that Apple has over them but I still think they could have done a lot better as it looked like they didn't do much. I mean the whole partnership with Qualcomm seems weird to me when at the end of the day they basically just slapped phone cpus into laptops and maybe changed some power limits. Clearly Qualcomm didn't do all that much to help Microsoft in this case. Had they developed a new cpu specifically for windows on ARM sorta like Apple with their M1 chip then maybe things would have been different. 

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

It's actually pretty unbelievable how well they pulled off the transition and it definitely makes Microsoft look pretty bad as it sorta shows what that transition should look like.

The key issue MS have is they are not, and will not, give a clear message to developers. Apple on the other had has not only giving a clear message but even provided a tight timeline that within 2 years of starting they will not be selling any more x86 systems this is the real kick in the bug our industry needs, speaking as a developer who has worked in large enterprise software roles I know every time MS keep on releasing new ARM devices the enterprise simple ignore it since at no point is MS putting any pressure on them support it.

 

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

Had they developed a new cpu specifically for windows on ARM sorta like Apple with their M1 chip then maybe things would have been different. 

To cover the R&D costs for something like this MS would have really needed to be all in, they would have had to sell enough units. I think MS is still `playing with` arm. To do a sucesfull transition they need to make us devs feel that we MUST put in the work (in most cases this is not much work). 

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

WindowsCE 2.0 would like a word with you, 1997 wants their ARM back.

 

In all seriousness, Microsoft made a seriously poor mistake with abandoning CE (Mobile) which the last version was Windows Phone 7(.8). As they basically dumped their majority market share in PDA's for their non-existent share in mp3-player-phones.

 

In hindsight they should have learned directly from Apple, The Zune was based on CE 6.0, and then never updated or upgraded. They released devices for 4 years and then left the market.

 

Apple has never "left a market" for having low market share. Apple has exited markets where it can't improve the devices beyond what already exists (such as WiFi routers), and who really wants a $399 external hard drive that operates at 5400RPM speeds over ethernet, in a time of SSD's that would need 64Gbits of bandwidth to access performatively.

Windows Phone 8 and up were all NT Kernel not CE, all these later ones were way better than all the CE stuff before it. Windows Phone 8 (which I still currently use) is the best phone OS if all you want is calling, txt and email.

[Kisai]

30 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Windows Phone 8 and up were all NT Kernel not CE, all these later ones were way better than all the CE stuff before it. Windows Phone 8 (which I still currently use) is the best phone OS if all you want is calling, txt and email.

I'm not saying Phone 8 was bad, I'm saying that Phone 8 was way too late to matter. Microsoft had CE, and should have built WiFi/GSM devices themselves on CE back in 2004 when all the CE PDA devices were still PDA's. The clearly couldn't build NT for devices that had to have the entire OS in firmware, and software in battery-backed RAM at the time.

 

I literately had a Windows Pocket 2003 SE based device, that I got a moderate amount of use of as a GPS at the time. If I wanted maps to update in real time though, my Nokia N95 got more use. The Nokia N95 came out same year as the first iPhone. The problem in using these devices as a GPS is that data coverage is basically trash in Canada, and still is. If you don't have offline maps, then you'll be driving in the wrong direction until you hit a town.

 

We all quickly forget that before the iphone, all the cell phone vendors not only had their own OS, but the only interoperability between any of them was Java2ME. That's also why Android was based on Java, to try and take advantage of the existing Java install base in RIM and Nokia devices.

 

Apple, had the iPod as a base. That's pretty much how the first generation iPhone was marketed. All the other convergences came later such as cameras (which most cell phones had at the time already), 3G data (which again most phones were rolling out UMTS (True 3G)) at the time. For all intents the first iPhone shouldn't have sold well at all, because it lacked all the features of every other device had standard.

 

Anyway.

 

While I think Microsoft makes a lot of mistakes, it's lack of commitment to things is second only to Google. Had Microsoft either built the hardware or jumped on to 3G-requirement 4 years before Apple did, perhaps Microsoft would have had the market leading device. Because they absolutely did have the market lead in PDA's, just most PDA's were not capable of playing music or video until Windows Mobile 2003, and the devices didn't have onboard codec's for video.

 

But alas, we do not have a time machine. Apple pretty much knows where the puck is going, and everyone else is second-guessing themselves.