Microsoft announces Windows Dev Kit 2023 PC - ARM64 based PC for Devs

[leadeater]

11 hours ago, ZetZet said:

You have to look at overall performance when the CPU starts to hit power limits. 

There are still two ways a CPU will hit power limit, per core/induvial core and total package power. If you are doing something that is only utilizing 1 or 2 cores heavily then M1 is going to be a lot faster, that's just how it is when the core has double the execution resources of other comparable desktop and laptop CPUs.

 

Both Zen 3 and Zen 4 are highly efficient designs but nothing is perfect or the best in every situation.

[Doobeedoo]

1 hour ago, hishnash said:

The cores they have are not even low end phone compatible. They are great for servers don't get me wrong but in any single core task not there for even phones.  They will need to build an entier new core. And as they include ex-apple staffers they will need to be extra careful to ensure it does not copy any of the apple internals that these staff members might know otherwise it will be trivial for apple to block the chip from sale, that is likly why they went in the direction of server chips as they know this was not going to bring in the lawers and is an area were there is lots of room to invoate. 

Yeah something better ARM based for Android and Windows on ARM needs to happen from now on.

[hishnash]

10 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I am fairly sure Windows does the same thing (translates in the background and saves that to a cache, before the program gets launched). It's just that the arm instructions they end up with requires more processing because of things like memory checks which wouldn't be necessary if they translated to more modern instructions.

It does however they are much more limited in how much they can pre-translate as the use of JIT etc is surprisingly common (even within windows system libs). MS have never pushed devs away from this so you will find most windows applications have some JIT and the nature of these JIT operations means they cant even translate in waves (like hardened runtime Mac apps) they are forced to do interpreting.  The hardened runtime on macOS means you cant have read-write-exicute memory so you need to write out your instructions then flag that memory as executable and then it can run, roseate uses this to on the fly translate that region of instructions. However on windows (and macOS for non hardened runtime x86 apps) you typically have read-write-exicutable memory and this is set before any instructions are written to the memory so there is no chance to quickly translate them.  

[hishnash]

1 minute ago, Doobeedoo said:

Yeah something better ARM based for Android and Windows on ARM needs to happen from now on.

What realy needs to happen is MS to given clear direction to developers.   If MS came out and said "in 5 years we will no longer sell x86 OEM licenses" (so that all machines you buy with windows pre-installed must be ARM) then thing would move very fast.  

Developed would feel the fire and put in the work (it is not that much work).

Other developed would also see what apps are not gong to be updated and spot holes in the market were they can create new apps as the legacy app that everyone uses will no longer be there to compete with them...

ARM chip vendors (small and big companies like Nvidia, AMD etc that all have licenses from ARM) would be able to turn out some reusable options in 5 years. 

But with MS current wishy washing, a little bit of ARM,.. but not realy... you can install it on your own hardware but not if you want to comply with the contract ish... no one from software to auxiliary device driver makers to OEMs to chip designers has any interest in the work needed. 

[Doobeedoo]

10 minutes ago, hishnash said:

What realy needs to happen is MS to given clear direction to developers.   If MS came out and said "in 5 years we will no longer sell x86 OEM licenses" (so that all machines you buy with windows pre-installed must be ARM) then thing would move very fast.  

Developed would feel the fire and put in the work (it is not that much work).

Other developed would also see what apps are not gong to be updated and spot holes in the market were they can create new apps as the legacy app that everyone uses will no longer be there to compete with them...

ARM chip vendors (small and big companies like Nvidia, AMD etc that all have licenses from ARM) would be able to turn out some reusable options in 5 years. 

But with MS current wishy washing, a little bit of ARM,.. but not realy... you can install it on your own hardware but not if you want to comply with the contract ish... no one from software to auxiliary device driver makers to OEMs to chip designers has any interest in the work needed. 

Yeah it's something it would need to take time and would needed to be executed properly and supported. Apple went full on with ARM and their design, but that's their world.

 

But something of performance of a modern good APU but ARM chip for a thin small laptop would be great. Now stuff needs to work natively too, not sure how MS will go with application compatibility layer with Windows and all. But I predict it will take quite a work on software side as on hardware to actually feel proper.

[leadeater]

29 minutes ago, hishnash said:

What realy needs to happen is MS to given clear direction to developers.   If MS came out and said "in 5 years we will no longer sell x86 OEM licenses" (so that all machines you buy with windows pre-installed must be ARM) then thing would move very fast.  

There is still legitimately no reason to move away from x86 to anything, ARM or otherwise, other than to try and get rid of intellectual rights restrictions on the CPUs we use. It's quite a big stretch to believe that having more open hardware will actually lead to many things people believe. While change could happen it's just as likely or really more likely nothing will, the biggest fish will always dominate and only a few architecture designs will get properly catered for.

 

Say for example Intel starts making desktop and laptop ARM CPUs and has a market capitalization of 70%, has anything actually changed? Nope.

[tim0901]

13 hours ago, Sauron said:

It blows my mind that up until now this wasn't the case

I'm sure the Visual Studio team would have loved to get ARM support out earlier, unfortunately they couldn't do anything until the libraries/APIs that they rely on were also upgraded - having different codebases for each architecture isn't exactly ideal. This meant waiting for things like WinUI 3, WPF and Windows Forms to name a few examples, which of course are developed by different teams, which were likely waiting for dependencies of their own to be updated...

 

And of course differing priorities will likely play a part here. ARM users are definitely a loud minority of customers, and it's hard to justify spending lots of time supporting them over developing other features that more users/developers will be able take advantage of.

[tim0901]

On 10/25/2022 at 7:42 AM, LAwLz said:

The reason why Rosetta 2 is so high performant is because it takes advantage of Armv8.3 instructions for using a memory model consistent with x86. Things like LDARP.

I don't think this is entirely accurate.

 

While Rosetta 2 does indeed use modern ARM instructions, Apple has also fully implemented the x86-64 TSO (memory ordering) into the chip, which isn't part of Armv8.5. The SOC can switch between the two on a per-core basis according to a special register, which can be manually overriden with something like TSOEnabler. This is why Rosetta 2 probably won't last forever - because eventually Apple will want to reclaim this die space.

 

M1 is also known to support some non-standard instructions, for example AFPCR is an early implementation of Armv8.7's FEAT_AFP, which was only standardised in 2020. As such it has some quirks - it uses a different register for one.

 

In theory other chip manufacturers can do this - Nvidia's Denver chip for example also supports TSO - but implementing TSO is no easy feat and as far as I'm aware there are no chips currently available that support both Armv8.7 and TSO.

[hishnash]

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

other than to try and get rid of intellectual rights restrictions on the CPUs we use.

These is a reason for MS.  MS have been pushing industry (rather hard) in the last few years to build support for `windows 365` this is basically windows instances running in azure many of the instrustry software vendors that have relationships with MS have been pushed to add the needed bits to optimise for this experience.

 In general the messaging on the side is lining up to look like MS might start dropping some of that legacy backwards support with the aim that most of the companies that need it will just extend their current windows subscriptions to windows 365 (azure instances) and with that move MS can then push harder on the hardware side.  Selling their own laptops etc and selling subscriptions to 365 will make MS much much more money than selling windows licenses. Moving to windows to ARM can force this translation (once win365 is ready). 

[williamcll]

Quote

• 32GB LPDDR4x RAM
• 512GB NVMe SSD
• Wi-Fi 6
• Bluetooth 5.1
• Windows 11 Pro
• Heatsink and fan to maximize the SoC performance, and provide continuous high performance.
• Stackable design
• 90W power supply included

This is what the "minimum requirements" for Windows 11 will be

[Sauron]

5 hours ago, tim0901 said:

And of course differing priorities will likely play a part here. ARM users are definitely a loud minority of customers, and it's hard to justify spending lots of time supporting them over developing other features that more users/developers will be able take advantage of.

I mean... it's microsoft trying to make windows on arm happen, not anyone else. People only really care about windows for compatibility. Getting them to use windows while giving up compatibility is a pretty tough sell.

 

So it's pretty weird that even their first party stuff has taken so long to be ported natively.

[Sauron]

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

There is still legitimately no reason to move away from x86 to anything, ARM or otherwise, other than to try and get rid of intellectual rights restrictions on the CPUs we use.

While the ISA of ARM is royalty free, actual CPU designs are not and neither are chipsets and other hardware that is still required to get any of it working. There isn't much to be gained on that front. RISC-V would be more promising on that front because there are associated royalty free architectures you can use.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, hishnash said:

These is a reason for MS.  MS have been pushing industry (rather hard) in the last few years to build support for `windows 365` this is basically windows instances running in azure many of the instrustry software vendors that have relationships with MS have been pushed to add the needed bits to optimise for this experience.

That has nothing to do with CPUs, like at all. This can be done regardless of any of that.

 

3 hours ago, hishnash said:

Moving to windows to ARM can force this translation (once win365 is ready). 

Not at all, Microsoft can force this whenever and however they like. They do just that with forcing companies to use Azure by putting in mandatory Azure credits that are not negotiable. They did just this in Australia with the Academic and Campus Agreements for universities there. Once there were Azure datacenters in country then as each contract expired and new ones were negotiated Azure credits suddenly became part of this and could not be removed. Of course you do not have to use those credits but then as the IT department how do you try and explain that away to the contracts and finance department, especially when the narrative of "cloud is the future and the only way' is rammed in to their heads and other senior management.  

 

In short hardware is non issue for any of that.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

I mean... it's microsoft trying to make windows on arm happen, not anyone else. People only really care about windows for compatibility. Getting them to use windows while giving up compatibility is a pretty tough sell.

 

So it's pretty weird that even their first party stuff has taken so long to be ported natively.

Don't forget that microsoft really only do the software stuff, they have very little control over the hardware designs and are reliant on companies like broadcomm, mediatek, etc to make them something that is suitable.  Unlike apple that does both their own software and hardware design and can make hardware components that make the software transition a lot faster. 

[Sauron]

9 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Don't forget that microsoft really only do the software stuff, they have very little control over the hardware designs and are reliant on companies like broadcomm, mediatek, etc to make them something that is suitable.  Unlike apple that does both their own software and hardware design and can make hardware components that make the software transition a lot faster. 

I guess? But still it shouldn't have taken this long to port first party tools, especially toosl that are required to make native software in the first place.

[TetraSky]

I for one am looking forward to an ARM future if it means better power efficiency. The new hardware coming out is getting ridiculous.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I guess? But still it shouldn't have taken this long to port first party tools, especially toosl that are required to make native software in the first place.

I would have thought so too, but given it didn't happen earlier and MS isn't exactly lacking the resources to have made it happen I can only assume the reason is something beyond their control.

[Sauron]

39 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I would have thought so too, but given it didn't happen earlier and MS isn't exactly lacking the resources to have made it happen I can only assume the reason is something beyond their control.

I don't know, it wouldn't be the first time MS makes absolutely bewildering roadmap choices or poorly thought out attempts at targeting other markets

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

While the ISA of ARM is royalty free

It isn't.

You have to pay ARM for the rights to use their ISA, even if you design everything yourself.

 

 

  

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

I would have thought so too, but given it didn't happen earlier and MS isn't exactly lacking the resources to have made it happen I can only assume the reason is something beyond their control.

I very much doubt that it was impossible for Microsoft to not have native versions of Visual Studio and the likes done earlier.

It was probably just a fairly low priority for them in combination with Visual Studio being a very complex program.

 

Microsoft doesn't lack resources, but if you follow their development teams and news surrounding their product it becomes very revealing that their resources allocation is often not that great. That, plus there is a lot of bureaucracy involved.

 

 

But it does make Microsoft look kind of bad when they are pushing for Windows on Arm and asking developers to port their programs to Arm, yet they themselves take something like 10 years to port one of their biggest and most important products to it.

It's hard to be sympathetic for Microsoft's struggles with getting Windows on Arm off the ground when they themselves are doing such a poor job supporting it.

 

It's such a stark contrast to Apple. And while some of the differences can be attributed to "Apple developed their own processor", things like Visual Studio not working natively on Windows on Arm before has nothing to do with hardware.

[Lightwreather]

6 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

It isn't.

You have to pay ARM for the rights to use their ISA, even if you design everything yourself.

It is royalty-free, but yes, you do have to pay licensing fees.

The difference, in the former you pay per use of the ISA, the latter you either pay once or as a recurring fee independent of the number of uses of the ISA.

[LAwLz]

22 minutes ago, Lightwreather JfromN said:

It is royalty-free, but yes, you do have to pay licensing fees.

The difference, in the former you pay per use of the ISA, the latter you either pay once or as a recurring fee independent of the number of uses of the ISA.

Edit: Sorry, misread your post. You could be right, but it depends on the license you get. ARM has a ton of different licenses and makes a lot of customer-specific ones as well.

Perpetual royalties are definingly a part of some of their licenses. I've seen some contracts specify 2% royalty on every chip sold, although that was for a Cortex design rather than the ISA. Wouldn't surprise me if the ISA licenses have something similar though.

 

 

 

Original message:

It's not really royalty free either. It depends on the license.

 

Not sure where all this misinformation is coming from, but Arm is in no way shape or form free. 

Are you perhaps getting it mixed up with RISC-V? The RISC-V instruction set is free. It uses an open source license and do not requires any license fees.

 

 

 

The Arm ISA is not open source. It is not royalty free. It is not patent free. It is not free to modify or even use.

There are only two legal ways of using the Arm ISA for free and those are:

1) Get granted an academic license from Arm. This license is free but comes with the caveat that you are not allowed to actually make a product with it. It is strictly for search purposes only, for things like a university.

2) ARM's "DesignStart" license. This is basically the academic license but for companies. Interested in testing out an Arm core because you might want to use it in a commercial product later? Then get the DesignStart license. But again, you are not allowed to actually sell the product you develop using this. It is just for testing.

 

As soon as you use their ISA outside of these two very particular licenses, you have to pay Arm in some way. Either an upfront cost for a license, regardless of whether or not you design the entire chip yourself or use a stock core design, or through royalties.

 

 

 

The Arm ISA is not in any way shape or form free.

That is the entire point and reason why RISC-V exists and might be exciting for some companies.

[suicidalfranco]

2 hours ago, TetraSky said:

I for one am looking forward to an ARM future if it means better power efficiency. The new hardware coming out is getting ridiculous.

only on the desktops and only on the highest ends of SKUs

on laptops and normal SKU every offering from intel, amd and nvidia seems pretty efficient to me 

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

It isn't.

You have to pay ARM for the rights to use their ISA, even if you design everything yourself.

Are you sure? I know you need to pay if you're starting off of their core designs (i.e. arm cortex-whatever) but afaik you may implement the ISA for free if you start from scratch and don't infringe any patents.

[sof006]

I welcome ARM as the future, instructions sets for ARM are much cleaner and as a result tend to be more efficient.

 

The AetherSX2 emulator on Android is already better at emulating PS2 then PCSX2 is on PC and its been around for less time.

 

We need ARM, smaller, more energy efficient, can be very powerful (Apple has proven that), easily go toe to toe against the likes of AMD and Intel. Qualcomms new Snapdragon chips are very impressive, my phone has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 inside and I have been blown away by what my phone is capable of doing.

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

Are you sure? I know you need to pay if you're starting off of their core designs (i.e. arm cortex-whatever) but afaik you may implement the ISA for free if you start from scratch and don't infringe any patents.

I am 99% sure. I find absolutely no indication of the ISA being free to use.

I am 100% sure you need a license for it, but the financial side of those licenses are secrets that I don't have access to. It wouldn't make sense for ARM to give that away though.

 

Unless we get confirmation that it is free, I think it is safe to assume it is not. No other ARM license is free (except the two I mentioned above) so I don't think it makes sense to assume this one is. Especially not since Qualcomm are currently in hot water because NUVIA uses the Arm ISA to design their own CPU core, but the license doesn't carry over when bought out.