Microsoft is changing the game. How will Apple and M chips fair?

[phrehdd]

Losers of the day - Intel, AMD (and NVidia?). It seems that Microsoft is jumping on the ARM processor wagon.

The term of the day NPU - see the video to learn about it.

Personal thought - fully integrated board with GPU, CPU, RAM is nothing new and in fact rather old. It was usually optimized at the cost of flexibility, certain types of changes etc. The NPU should be the interesting part of this all. I'll be curious to see how NVidia, AMD and others shift their markets.

 

[spiderman0616]

A) I don't think MS is really ditching x86 anytime soon. That would be a good way to lose a lot of customers, not to mention good faith. There are unfortunately still a lot of businesses out there that depend on x86 applications and compatibility. MS has painted themselves into a corner here, as they are known to hardly ever remove any major legacy code from Windows. (Which is why there are still elements of all the Windows UIs in every version.)

B) Microsoft still wouldn't control the "full stack" unless they stopped allowing other manufacturers to sell Windows PCs. As long as Windows hardware is the wild west, as it always has been and probably always will be, Microsoft really won't be able to respond to M1, not to mention M2, M3, etc., for a VERY long time.

 

[thenewperson]

I mean, Apple's been fine in the ARM world for a while now.

 

[leman]

Losers of the day - Intel, AMD (and NVidia?). It seems that Microsoft is jumping on the ARM processor wagon.

Microsoft has been shipping ARM versions of their OS and software for several years now. They have a system-on-a-chip they co-designed with Qualcomm (SQ1) back in 2019. It's a very odd to hear someone says that they are "jumping on the ARM processor bandwagon" when they had one for three years now.

The term of the day NPU - see the video to learn about it.

Care to summarise what this "NPU" is? Not really interested to watch a 11 minute video for something that will probably take a line of text to explain.

Unless of course you are talking about the "Neural Processor Unit", you know, a kind of ML inference acceleration hardware smartphones have been shipping for years (and Apple specifically had in their devices since 2017). In the x86 world, this kind of "NPU" is most prominently featured in Nvidia GPUs under the name of "tensor cores".

 

[Colstan]

I enjoy Vadim's enthusiasm, but I've never seen anyone turn a termite hill into a volcano like a Max Tech video. They manage to find an obscure patent, or in this case a niche product, and make it out to be a technological revolution.

Microsoft has tried to diversify away from x86 before. Windows NT supported not just IA-32, but also PowerPC, Alpha, and MIPS. That effort went nowhere and NT 4.0 was the last to support those RISC architectures on desktop. It appears that Microsoft is hedging again with ARM, and thus far, they have achieved little with it. Many Windows programs are far too entrenched in x86, from scientific applications that require Intel-specific instructions like AVX2, to games which perform poorly, if at all, under translation. Many businesses won't even consider alternatives, simply out of habit and dependancy. Unless Intel and AMD completely collapse, I don't foresee CISC losing any appreciable Windows PC marketshare to what appears to continue to be an exclusivity deal with Qualcomm.

That may change, at some point, but Microsoft doesn't have the same structural benefits that Apple's vertical integration strategy has. As pointed out above, Microsoft doesn't control the whole stack, Apple produces the entire widget. Hence, Apple will always have an inherent advantage in that regard, including the ability to remove old technological barnacles and routinely eliminate cruft.

As long as that is the case, Microsoft will remain a reactive, over-glorified utility company, maintaining archaic compatibility until end times. It's like being impressed that my power company managed to lower my electricity bill by 2%.

 

[Kazgarth]

Unlike Google which went from mobile phones (android) to tablets and ultimately PCs (ChromeOS).

I believe Microsoft is going the other way, from PCs down to tablets and mobiles. And ARM is key piece to be competitive in those categories.

Apple is multiple generations ahead of both in SoC technologies, and the sheer volume of chips produced (economy of scale) makes it harder for competitors to compete on the same price and/or specs (they always have to compromise somewhere).

 

[StudioMacs]

The only thing new is a renewed marketing push aimed at developers ahead of Apple’s WWDC.

 

[leman]

Unlike Google which went from mobile phones (android) to tablets and ultimately PCs (ChromeOS).

I believe Microsoft is going the other way, from PCs down to tablets and mobiles. And ARM is key piece to be competitive in those categories.

Microsoft only fairly recently started making PCs (laptops). They made tablets and phones long before that - and they closed their phone business due to lack of success.

They even had a mobile OS (Windows RT) that was supposed to power hybrid devices and phones, which was deprecated six years ago because it was deemed a failure.

 

[mi7chy]

Another Max Tech click bait. It's not going to change anything. x64 will remain king due to having the largest native software ecosystem. Official Windows on ARM support for devices like the $75 Raspberry Pi 4 8GB would be nice but even that won't change much.

 

[Bodhitree]

A few nice things from Build 2022

- Devkit which basically looks like a Mac Mini powered by Snapdragon running WinOnArm
- Full Visual Studio 2022 on Arm64 (including Visual C++)
- A complete dev toolchain for Arm, including VS Code, Modern .net 6, Java, etc

Project Volterra is Microsoft's new Snapdragon-powered Windows 11 mini PC

Project Volterra could be your next great dev PC

www.techradar.com

 

[thedocbwarren]

A few nice things from Build 2022

- Devkit which basically looks like a Mac Mini powered by Snapdragon running WinOnArm
- Full Visual Studio 2022 on Arm64 (including Visual C++)
- A complete dev toolchain for Arm, including VS Code, Modern .net 6, Java, etc

Project Volterra is Microsoft's new Snapdragon-powered Windows 11 mini PC

Project Volterra could be your next great dev PC

www.techradar.com

I think, honestly, it only helps bring ARM to the forefront in the desktop mindset. That makes Macs more competitive ,not less. It signals Intel as well.

Just my two cents.

 

[w5jck]

A) I don't think MS is really ditching x86 anytime soon. That would be a good way to lose a lot of customers, not to mention good faith. There are unfortunately still a lot of businesses out there that depend on x86 applications and compatibility. MS has painted themselves into a corner here, as they are known to hardly ever remove any major legacy code from Windows. (Which is why there are still elements of all the Windows UIs in every version.)

B) Microsoft still wouldn't control the "full stack" unless they stopped allowing other manufacturers to sell Windows PCs. As long as Windows hardware is the wild west, as it always has been and probably always will be, Microsoft really won't be able to respond to M1, not to mention M2, M3, etc., for a VERY long time.

It does make a huge difference when a company like Apple won’t license their hardware. It allows them to switch from Motorola to PowerPC to Intel and now to M Chips without as much screaming from customers as MS will have if they tried to switch totally away from the chips they currently use.

 

[BanditoB]

By building their x86 translation app for running legacy Windows software on Arm and redoing all of their developer tools to support both platforms, Microsoft is really future-proofing themselves. It is very clear that Arm owns portable computing and more and more laptops will move in that direction as better SOCs become available. This has to be done as the x86 architecture is simply not capable of performing in the same power envelope as Arm chips do.

By making this announcement, Microsoft is signaling the computer hardware manufacturers that they will support this transition to Arm and provide a (hopefully) seamless experience for users of the new hardware. Your portable computer will be Arm-based and your desktop can remain x86-based and run the same software so everything will “just work” to coin a phrase.

It would appear that all of Microsoft’s tepid success in Arm is now going to come to fruition.

 

[Captain_Mac]

This is actually pretty good for Apple too. It may enable virtualisation of Windows for consumers will a proper license (not depending on Insider builds) and, if they partner with Apple, the return of Bootcamp. In terms of software, it opens another door for developers to compile for ARM and may facilitate porting of software to/from Mac.
Interesting times ahead

 

[phrehdd]

Microsoft has been shipping ARM versions of their OS and software for several years now. They have a system-on-a-chip they co-designed with Qualcomm (SQ1) back in 2019. It's a very odd to hear someone says that they are "jumping on the ARM processor bandwagon" when they had one for three years now.



Care to summarise what this "NPU" is? Not really interested to watch a 11 minute video for something that will probably take a line of text to explain.

Unless of course you are talking about the "Neural Processor Unit", you know, a kind of ML inference acceleration hardware smartphones have been shipping for years (and Apple specifically had in their devices since 2017). In the x86 world, this kind of "NPU" is most prominently featured in Nvidia GPUs under the name of "tensor cores".

Maybe you should look at the video before making your comment. Previous efforts with ARM were not so much for PC world but as most know, other compute devices. The inclusion of NPU is also different for Microsoft with respect to integration for the desktop, servers and cloud. As for an 11 minute video that you didn't care to bother with, just imagine, we bothered reading your comment. Maybe you can skip/skim through it like others do.

Cheers.

 

[StudioMacs]

Maybe you should look at the video before making your comment. Previous efforts with ARM were not so much for PC world but as most know, other compute devices. The inclusion of NPU is also different for Microsoft with respect to integration for the desktop, servers and cloud. As for an 11 minute video that you didn't care to bother with, just imagine, we bothered reading your comment. Maybe you can skip/skim through it like others do.

Cheers.

Do you work for Max, or do you worship him for free?

i can’t imagine spamming such low-quality content and having the gall to act knowledgeable.

 

[ian87w]

Well, first of all, whatever Microsoft is doing, they'll be facing an even larger problem, which is backward compatibility and emulation. Apple with Rosetta 2 is already considered "transparent," yet many still have problems, and that's with the limited and highly controlled mac ecosystem and Apple already ditching 32bit completely. Windows is a completely different beast, where not only full 32bit compatibility is expected, there are still even expected compatibility bits with MS-DOS. Add on the numerous drivers.

Making the hardware is easy. MS already tried it multiple times, since Windows RT days. The problem is, Qualcomm, MS' exclusive partner, is not even giving the performance good enough to compete with x86.

And don't forget that Apple already had a huge head start. The only thing that will allow competitors to gain advantage is if Apple stumbled themselves (eg. being distracted to be the new Netflix).

It's nothing unexpected that ARM is the next evolution for the personal computers. Mobile phones and Apple have shown it. Windows will get there, but it would probably take another 5 to 10 years. MS is still having problems to force devs to even do UWP. And then there's the enterprise customers, which is actually Microsoft's main bread and butter, and they're the ones having highly customized legacy anything.

So, good to know, but don't expect much. Heck, I expected the Windows PC and laptops market to have a shakedown with the M1 release, yet everything is still more of the same. 5 years later, maybe, but not anytime soon.

 

[throAU]

By building their x86 translation app for running legacy Windows software on Arm and redoing all of their developer tools to support both platforms, Microsoft is really future-proofing themselves. It is very clear that Arm owns portable computing and more and more laptops will move in that direction as better SOCs become available. This has to be done as the x86 architecture is simply not capable of performing in the same power envelope as Arm chips do.

By making this announcement, Microsoft is signaling the computer hardware manufacturers that they will support this transition to Arm and provide a (hopefully) seamless experience for users of the new hardware. Your portable computer will be Arm-based and your desktop can remain x86-based and run the same software so everything will “just work” to coin a phrase.

It would appear that all of Microsoft’s tepid success in Arm is now going to come to fruition.

Let me go get my version of Windows 2000 for MIPS or Alpha to upgrade this copy of NT4

Oh wait...

 

[ian87w]

And then there are the OEMs. Microsoft has been trying hard to make Windows experience better, but then the OEMs tend to screw things up in the end. For example, decent trackpad. Microsoft has implemented a decent trackpad drivers, but OEMs still use crappy ones for their builds.

I'd guess what we will see is overpriced ARM laptops running old Snapdragon SoCs (like the Snapdragon 680) with outdated cores and eMMC storage. Poor user experience and less backward compatibility, and people will end up still voting for x86 with their wallet.

 

[phrehdd]

Do you work for Max, or do you worship him for free?

i can’t imagine spamming such low-quality content and having the gall to act knowledgeable.

Dearie, you can find other sources on the Microsoft Arm topic and simply pass on this one. It still doesn't change the fact that Microsoft is making measurable strides in this direction.

You wax quixotic if you believe your swipe or insult directed towards me has any weight. Yawn.

 

[deconstruct60]

Losers of the day - Intel, AMD (and NVidia?). It seems that Microsoft is jumping on the ARM processor wagon.

The term of the day NPU - see the video to learn about it.

Is this clickbait time or what?

This is actually the SECOND Arm developer desktop model Microsoft has done.
Microsoft jumping on? Perhaps if it was the first time. But it is not.


"... This isn't the first hardware that Microsoft has pushed to encourage developers to try Windows on Arm. Last year, it listed the $219 ECS LIVA QC710 in the Microsoft Store, targeting it specifically at app developers. While small and affordable, the box's 4GB of RAM, weak Qualcomm 7c processor, 64GB of internal storage, and lackluster port selection didn't exactly give developers a lot of room to stretch their legs. Volterra looks like it could address some or all of those shortcomings. .... "

Microsoft announces a brand-new Arm-powered desktop PC and Arm-native dev tools

Snapdragon-powered “Project Volterra” will focus on AI and machine learning.

arstechnica.com

Is there $219 previous effort in November 2021 was a bit way "under horsepowered" ( 100GbE ? ) to get folks excited? Yeah. Not surprising 'nobody' remembers this. More than a decent chance this "Volterra" will be more interesting to more folks. The native SDK helps loads also.

However, this is still not some kind of motherboard vendor releasing desktop boards for the DIY with your trusting screwdriver and thermal paste crowd. ( retail OEM Windows license sales this won't drive).

Won't be too surprising if these boxes are deployed same way Mini's are in Azure's dev service deployments in addition to being bought for dev desktops.

Microsoft Dev Box will virtualize your Windows development PC in a browser window

Windows 365-powered VMs support variable hardware and software configs.

arstechnica.com

Most of this dev instances will be x86-64, but dev-box-in-the-could it would be easy to weave in a Arm instance for folks also where porting/build to both platforms.

Typical Microsoft fashion where it takes them until "version 3" to get it right. This is all pretty much modus operandi for MS progressions. [ Even if this Volterra is 8cx gen 3 powered ... mini-DisplayPort is suggestive they are not pushing the video out envelope here. Probably is pretty close to just being a "headless" 8cx gen 3 laptop board that has been refactored to fit this desktop container. The mini-DP port could be just embedded-DP connection upgraded to DP that would have been used to drive the laptop display panel. ]

Personal thought - fully integrated board with GPU, CPU, RAM is nothing new and in fact rather old. It was usually optimized at the cost of flexibility, certain types of changes etc. The NPU should be the interesting part of this all. I'll be curious to see how NVidia, AMD and others shift their markets.

The NPU isn't 'new'. Looks like Qualcomm shifting their marketing terms to overlap Apple's more so than a new strategic move.


"... Other functions include AI acceleration, which Qualcomm is quoting a 3x boost from 9 TOPs to 29 TOPs in the new chip. Note that this is CPU+GPU+Hexagon combined, which is unlikely to exist within the same software – speaking to Qualcomm, they say that different software can use different segments to get good asynchronous performance. ..."
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17127/qualcomms-8cx-gen-3-for-notebooks-nuvia-core-in-20222023.

The 8cx in previous iterations had. AI/ML workloads done on a mix of the Qualcomm GPU (Adreno) and DSP (Hexagon). Toss a new Windows/Android library on top and call it "Qualcomm's Neural Processing SDK" and now using same marketing terminiology as Apple. Not a new move, just new vocabulary.


"... Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK is designed to help developers run one or more neural network models trained in Caffe/Caffe2, ONNX, or TensorFlow on Snapdragon mobile platforms, whether that is the CPU, GPU or DSP. ..."

Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK | Qualcomm Developer

The Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK for AI is designed to run neural networks on Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.

developer.qualcomm.com

Similarly Microsoft Azure has worked with Qualcomm on IOT ML workloads as far back as 2018.

Accelerating AI on the intelligent edge: Microsoft and Qualcomm create vision AI developer kit | Microsoft Azure Blog

Today at the Microsoft Build developer conference, we are announcing a partnership with Qualcomm, one of the largest mobile and IoT chipset manufacturers in the world...

azure.microsoft.com

Not sure if Azure every deployed 'AI 100' modules but Qualcomm has been at the frindges of AI/ML inference accerlation for a while

Qualcomm's Cloud AI 100 Now Sampling: Up to 400TOPs at 75W

www.anandtech.com

There should be zero 'shocking news' that Qualcomm has a AI/ML/NPU SDK library. What did folks leverage to make the Ai 100 work several years ago?

 

[jav6454]

Losers of the day - Intel, AMD (and NVidia?). It seems that Microsoft is jumping on the ARM processor wagon.

The term of the day NPU - see the video to learn about it.

Personal thought - fully integrated board with GPU, CPU, RAM is nothing new and in fact rather old. It was usually optimized at the cost of flexibility, certain types of changes etc. The NPU should be the interesting part of this all. I'll be curious to see how NVidia, AMD and others shift their markets.

They won't ditch the x86 architecture, but they will more likely have two Windows versions (ARM & x86).

 

[phrehdd]

Is this clickbait time or what?

This is actually the SECOND Arm developer desktop model Microsoft has done.
Microsoft jumping on? Perhaps if it was the first time. But it is not.


"... This isn't the first hardware that Microsoft has pushed to encourage developers to try Windows on Arm. Last year, it listed the $219 ECS LIVA QC710 in the Microsoft Store, targeting it specifically at app developers. While small and affordable, the box's 4GB of RAM, weak Qualcomm 7c processor, 64GB of internal storage, and lackluster port selection didn't exactly give developers a lot of room to stretch their legs. Volterra looks like it could address some or all of those shortcomings. .... "

Microsoft announces a brand-new Arm-powered desktop PC and Arm-native dev tools

Snapdragon-powered “Project Volterra” will focus on AI and machine learning.

arstechnica.com

Is there $219 previous effort in November 2021 was a bit way "under horsepowered" ( 100GbE ? ) to get folks excited? Yeah. Not surprising 'nobody' remembers this. More than a decent chance this "Volterra" will be more interesting to more folks. The native SDK helps loads also.

However, this is still not some kind of motherboard vendor releasing desktop boards for the DIY with your trusting screwdriver and thermal paste crowd. ( retail OEM Windows license sales this won't drive).

Won't be too surprising if these boxes are deployed same way Mini's are in Azure's dev service deployments in addition to being bought for dev desktops.

Microsoft Dev Box will virtualize your Windows development PC in a browser window

Windows 365-powered VMs support variable hardware and software configs.

arstechnica.com

Most of this dev instances will be x86-64, but dev-box-in-the-could it would be easy to weave in a Arm instance for folks also where porting/build to both platforms.

Typical Microsoft fashion where it takes them until "version 3" to get it right. This is all pretty much modus operandi for MS progressions. [ Even if this Volterra is 8cx gen 3 powered ... mini-DisplayPort is suggestive they are not pushing the video out envelope here. Probably is pretty close to just being a "headless" 8cx gen 3 laptop board that has been refactored to fit this desktop container. The mini-DP port could be just embedded-DP connection upgraded to DP that would have been used to drive the laptop display panel. ]




The NPU isn't 'new'. Looks like Qualcomm shifting their marketing terms to overlap Apple's more so than a new strategic move.


"... Other functions include AI acceleration, which Qualcomm is quoting a 3x boost from 9 TOPs to 29 TOPs in the new chip. Note that this is CPU+GPU+Hexagon combined, which is unlikely to exist within the same software – speaking to Qualcomm, they say that different software can use different segments to get good asynchronous performance. ..."
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17127/qualcomms-8cx-gen-3-for-notebooks-nuvia-core-in-20222023.

The 8cx in previous iterations had. AI/ML workloads done on a mix of the Qualcomm GPU (Adreno) and DSP (Hexagon). Toss a new Windows/Android library on top and call it "Qualcomm's Neural Processing SDK" and now using same marketing terminiology as Apple. Not a new move, just new vocabulary.


"... Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK is designed to help developers run one or more neural network models trained in Caffe/Caffe2, ONNX, or TensorFlow on Snapdragon mobile platforms, whether that is the CPU, GPU or DSP. ..."

Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK | Qualcomm Developer

The Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK for AI is designed to run neural networks on Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.

developer.qualcomm.com

Similarly Microsoft Azure has worked with Qualcomm on IOT ML workloads as far back as 2018.

Accelerating AI on the intelligent edge: Microsoft and Qualcomm create vision AI developer kit | Microsoft Azure Blog

Today at the Microsoft Build developer conference, we are announcing a partnership with Qualcomm, one of the largest mobile and IoT chipset manufacturers in the world...

azure.microsoft.com

Not sure if Azure every deployed 'AI 100' modules but Qualcomm has been at the frindges of AI/ML inference accerlation for a while

Qualcomm's Cloud AI 100 Now Sampling: Up to 400TOPs at 75W

www.anandtech.com

There should be zero 'shocking news' that Qualcomm has a AI/ML/NPU SDK library. What did folks leverage to make the Ai 100 work several years ago?

No one suggest that some of the tech is new but rather how Microsoft is engaging it this time around. This iteration is far more in line as a response to ARM/Apple. Candidly, I am surprised how hostile people have gotten here. If there is disagreement, then by all means disagree but no need to be rude or hostile.

 

[deconstruct60]

Unlike Google which went from mobile phones (android) to tablets and ultimately PCs (ChromeOS).

I believe Microsoft is going the other way, from PCs down to tablets and mobiles. And ARM is key piece to be competitive in those categories.

errr. I think you are forgetting about Windows Phone OS ( 2010 -> 2020 )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone

(where Microsoft often used Qualcomm SoCs. )

Microsoft isn't going "down to" mobiles at all at this point. They are deeply integrating into Android.

Surface Duo runs Android 10 (and a Qualcomm SoC)

Surface Duo 2 – Dual-Screen Mobile Productivity – Microsoft Surface

Open two screens and discover limitless possibilities with Surface Duo 2, now with next-level multitasking, lightning-fast 5G and intelligent three-lens camera.

www.microsoft.com

[ Google's latest move to do better at supporting 'large screen' Android devices should help . ]

Microsoft is using Android for mobile. Windows 11 supports an Android-on-Windows with the Amazon app store. There is no "Windows" (and Microsoft ) going to mobile move coming.


Similarly Microsoft HoloLens 2. .... powered by Quaclomm.

HoloLens 2—Overview, Features, and Specs | Microsoft HoloLens

HoloLens 2, a new vision for computing. Take a closer look at the specs and features that bring your mixed reality business solution to life.

www.microsoft.com

Apple is multiple generations ahead of both in SoC technologies, and the sheer volume of chips produced (economy of scale) makes it harder for competitors to compete on the same price and/or specs (they always have to compromise somewhere).

Sheer volume? For the $450 and up Android market Qualcomm is not present in a large majority of those phones. There is more to world volume than just the iPhone and Macs. ( In USA even Samsung uses Qualcomm ).

Apple really isn't trying to compete on price much.

For the Arm Windows laptops Qualcomm (and vendors) have heavily sold the celluar modem feature. If look at Apple mark up for $200 mark up for iPad Pro for cellular it is doubtful Apple will be the "low price leader" when they get around to adding Celluar to Macs.

Microsoft doesn't have to 100% "monkey see, monkey do" what Apple is doing. They don't necessarily need to do their own PC Arm SoC. More competition among SoC vendors would help long term, but roll-their-own? Not particularly.

Samsung or Mediatek ... not really a big blocker for them either with Arm X2 (and later X3 ) cores on decent process nodes. ( Samsung is working with AMD for a RDNA2 GPU which could be a bitter fit for Windows than it is for Android. )

 

[leman]

Maybe you should look at the video before making your comment. Previous efforts with ARM were not so much for PC world but as most know, other compute devices. The inclusion of NPU is also different for Microsoft with respect to integration for the desktop, servers and cloud. As for an 11 minute video that you didn't care to bother with, just imagine, we bothered reading your comment. Maybe you can skip/skim through it like others do.

Cheers.

It took you 11 minutes to read my comment? Oh my…

In respect to the video, I stopped watching Maxims stuff a while ago. He is a sensationalist who too often talks about stuff he has little clue about. The only worthwhile recent content they had was the Studio teardown.