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Microsoft's ARM dev kit is here!

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exoticSpice

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Jan 9, 2022
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www.engadget.com

Microsoft's Project Volterra is a mini PC for ARM developers

Microsoft designed Project Volterra to help developers with building native ARM apps that employ AI-accelerated workloads.
www.engadget.com www.engadget.com

To ensure ease of use for our shared customers, we are also announcing a comprehensive end-to-end Arm-native toolchain for Arm native apps, including:

  • Full Visual Studio 2022 & VSCode
  • Visual C++
  • Modern .NET 6 and Java
  • Classic .NET Framework
  • Windows Terminal
  • WSL and WSA for running Linux and Android apps
 
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Still using a Qualcomm SoC doesn't mean the exclusivity deal will not end. Supposedly Microsoft will announce more information on Windows ARM on 64-bit processors licensing later this summer.
 
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T'hain Esh Kelch said:
So Microsoft is opening up for a world of non-x86 machines long term? I mean, other than their Windows RT things..
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Microsoft has been selling Arm based computers for a while. Longer than Apple if you don’t count iPhones or iPads. Before this one you could get a Surface Pro X.

Edit: According to Ars Technica, Microsoft was already selling a small Qualcomm based desktop. The ECS LIVA QC710.
 
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What's interesting is that if I'm reading this right, you can use ARM64 Visual Studio to build x86/x64 products. And existing third-party components will mostly "just work" under the ARM64 version... So ARM64 Visual Studio won't be a cheap cousin like the Mac version was. Microsoft has put a lot of work into their development toolchain to make it binary-neutral and the results are showing.

This is particularly good news for developers who buy Macs to be able to work cross-platform... losing the ability to run Visual Studio on the Mac was a big loss for some of us... looks like that is no longer (or soon won't be) an issue.
 
poorcody said:
What's interesting is that if I'm reading this right, you can use ARM64 Visual Studio to build x86/x64 products.
Click to expand...

What is even better, you can not only build for ARM64, x64 and x86 - you can also locally debug these 3 target architectures. This goes as far, that you can step through or set breakpoints in x64 assembly code on an ARM64 device. See below Visual Studio 2022 17.3 Preview 2 - ARM64 - where i am debugging x64 code on my Surface Pro X.

VSarm64.png
 
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I got Docker ARM64 on OSX running Azure SQL Server Edge. I was able to restore a backup from my app to the sql server edge container and hit the docker container from my app running on windows 11 in parallels and its all been working for me rather nicely so far without any unsolvable issues. All my queries in my app work fine. Linq and all. Pretty sweet. Took some tinkering with settings but did get there.
 
poorcody said:
What's interesting is that if I'm reading this right, you can use ARM64 Visual Studio to build x86/x64 products. And existing third-party components will mostly "just work" under the ARM64 version... So ARM64 Visual Studio won't be a cheap cousin like the Mac version was. Microsoft has put a lot of work into their development toolchain to make it binary-neutral and the results are showing.

This is particularly good news for developers who buy Macs to be able to work cross-platform... losing the ability to run Visual Studio on the Mac was a big loss for some of us... looks like that is no longer (or soon won't be) an issue.
Click to expand...
The ARM64 Visual Studio is the real Windows Visual Studio ported to ARM64. The Mac "Visual Studio" is a completely different application. Microsoft likes to confuse people, they also have Visual Studio Code which isn't Visual Studio either. If you want a .NET IDE for MacOS, just get Jetbrains Rider.

Microsoft has been busy with Visual Studio 2022, the previous version 2019 was not fully ported to x64. It was a 32bit x86 application with some x64 components.
 
Analog Kid said:
Or Newton….

But yeah, if we exclude all of Apple‘s Arm products MS has been in this game longer. 😉
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It was in context of the person I was quoting. They implied making ARM systems was something new for Microsoft. It isn't. Comparing Microsoft to modern desktop/laptops from Apple, they've been making ARM based systems for longer. Trust me, I'm well aware of the Newton (I made my living writing Newton software for years).
 
jdb8167 said:
It was in context of the person I was quoting. They implied making ARM systems was something new for Microsoft. It isn't. Comparing Microsoft to modern desktop/laptops from Apple, they've been making ARM based systems for longer. Trust me, I'm well aware of the Newton (I made my living writing Newton software for years).
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Sorry, no offense meant. I know the distinction you were trying to draw, I just found it narrow enough to be a bit amusing-- to explicitly set aside that Apple was a founding partner of Arm and that Apple has been shipping a customized version of BSD Unix (iOS) on Arm for 15 years to make the point that Microsoft has been making computers with Arm for a long time.

This isn't MS's first Arm rodeo, but it takes a fine blade to cut Apple out of that picture.
 
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Apple is in the odd situation where it's (relatively) modest market share has actually given them an advantage. For Microsoft, it's a case of providing ARM resources and waiting to see who tests the waters. There's almost three decades of legacy software and, unless the emulation is good enough, many corporate users won't budge from x86.

That said, hardware is going to be a major driver. If manufacturers see a benefit of moving to ARM (Will the chips be cheaper for them?) then the transition might be steady.
 
Apple Knowledge Navigator said:
Apple is in the odd situation where it's (relatively) modest market share has actually given them an advantage. For Microsoft, it's a case of providing ARM resources and waiting to see who tests the waters. There's almost three decades of legacy software and, unless the emulation is good enough, many corporate users won't budge from x86.

That said, hardware is going to be a major driver. If manufacturers see a benefit of moving to ARM (Will the chips be cheaper for them?) then the transition might be steady.
Click to expand...
Apple hasn't prioritized ancient legacy hardware and software such as a 32bit version of their Desktop OS. MacOS dropped 32bit Intel soon after they dropped PowerPC and they dropped support for 32bit iOS apps with iOS 11. Microsoft still support 32bit Windows 10 and Windows 11 was the first 64bit only version. Visual Studio 2022 was also the first fully 64bit version. When they released Windows 8 for ARM it couldn't even run Intel Windows apps. When they eventually released an Intel emulator it originally only supported 32bit Intel applications.

However, the new Microsoft is far more forward looking and open that the old one. They may be ready to really commit to ARM64. The ability to target Intel Windows from ARM was a nice surprise and their support for Linux Development on Windows has been impressive. For cross platform C++ developers Visual Studio 2019 supports CMake, WSL and remote Linux hosts for building and debugging C++ on Linux.
 
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