Nvidia To Make Arm-Based PC Chips (reuters.com) 42
According to Reuters, Nvidia is designing ARM-based processors that would run Microsoft's Windows operating system. While they're not expected to be ready until 2025, it poses a major new challenge to Intel which has long dominated the PC industry. From the report: The AI chip giant's new pursuit is part of Microsoft's effort to help chip companies build Arm-based processors for Windows PCs. Microsoft's plans take aim at Apple, which has nearly doubled its market share in the three years since releasing its own Arm-based chips in-house for its Mac computers, according to preliminary third-quarter data from research firm IDC. Advanced Micro Devices also plans to make chips for PCs with Arm technology, according to two people familiar with the matter. Nvidia and AMD could sell PC chips as soon as 2025, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Nvidia and AMD would join Qualcomm, which has been making Arm-based chips for laptops since 2016. At an event on Tuesday that will be attended by Microsoft executives, including vice president of Windows and Devices Pavan Davuluri, Qualcomm plans to reveal more details about a flagship chip that a team of ex-Apple engineers designed, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm's efforts could shake up a PC industry that Intel long dominated but which is under increasing pressure from Apple. Apple's custom chips have given Mac computers better battery life and speedy performance that rivals chips that use more energy. Executives at Microsoft have observed how efficient Apple's Arm-based chips are, including with AI processing, and desire to attain similar performance, one of the sources said. Microsoft has been encouraging the involved chipmakers to build advanced AI features into the CPUs they are designing. The company envisions AI-enhanced software such as its Copilot to become an increasingly important part of using Windows. To make that a reality, forthcoming chips from Nvidia, AMD and others will need to devote the on-chip resources to do so. "Microsoft learned from the 90s that they don't want to be dependent on Intel again, they don't want to be dependent on a single vendor," said Jay Goldberg, chief executive of D2D Advisory, a finance and strategy consulting firm. "If Arm really took off in PC (chips), they were never going to let Qualcomm be the sole supplier."
Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm's efforts could shake up a PC industry that Intel long dominated but which is under increasing pressure from Apple. Apple's custom chips have given Mac computers better battery life and speedy performance that rivals chips that use more energy. Executives at Microsoft have observed how efficient Apple's Arm-based chips are, including with AI processing, and desire to attain similar performance, one of the sources said. Microsoft has been encouraging the involved chipmakers to build advanced AI features into the CPUs they are designing. The company envisions AI-enhanced software such as its Copilot to become an increasingly important part of using Windows. To make that a reality, forthcoming chips from Nvidia, AMD and others will need to devote the on-chip resources to do so. "Microsoft learned from the 90s that they don't want to be dependent on Intel again, they don't want to be dependent on a single vendor," said Jay Goldberg, chief executive of D2D Advisory, a finance and strategy consulting firm. "If Arm really took off in PC (chips), they were never going to let Qualcomm be the sole supplier."
AGAIN??? (Score:2, Insightful)
"Microsoft learned from the 90s that they don't want to be dependent on Intel again..."
When was Microsoft NOT dependent on Intel? Microsoft came into existence providing software for Intel.
MS tried to diversify from Intel in the 80s and 90s, if anything they learned the opposite.
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"Microsoft came into existence providing software for Intel."
No, you are mistaken.
Microsoft was providing software to IBM, not Intel.
And as IBM knows a thing or two about monopolies, they forced Intel to find a second provider for their Intel chips : from AMD made under licence.
Re: AGAIN??? (Score:3)
Microsoft started by selling basic to mits to use on their Intel 8080 based personal computer
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Microsoft ported their BASIC to loads of different CPUs. Commodore BASIC and Applesoft BASIC were both produced by Microsoft. They covered all the popular CPUs back in the day (8080, Z80, 6800, 6809, 6502, etc).
So yes, they started by selling a BASIC that ran on the 8080, but they didn't just stay there.
Interesting side-fact here - Windows NT started out targeting platforms other than the x86 - the x86 version was a port. They did this because they didn't want to be locked into Intel.
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yes but the statement was
"Microsoft came into existence providing software for Intel."
No, you are mistaken.
Microsoft didn't exist before BASIC on Altair which used an Intel CPU, its nice they didnt stay there but it doesn't change the fact
WinNT was portable between CPU arch (Score:5, Informative)
"Microsoft learned from the 90s that they don't want to be dependent on Intel again..."
When was Microsoft NOT dependent on Intel?
When WinNT was released. The point of NT (aka OS/2 3.0), was for its code to be portable between CPU architectures. It was orgiinally developed on MIPS and Intel.. WinNT4 supported Intel, MIPS, PowerPC and Alpha. Microsoft was ready to go whatever direction consumers decided. Consumers decided Intel.
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I wouldn't call MIPS, PowerPC and Alpha of '90ies consumer grade
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PowerPC was used in a lot of consumer Macs. Later it was popular in games consoles, the last being the Wii U.
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IBM ThinkPad Power Series
Check out Daves Garage on Youtube, he has a 3 hour interview with Dave Cuttler. Want to know the history of the PC and the relationship to the CPU going from Windows 3.1 to Windows 2000, Dave Cutler is th
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I wouldn't call MIPS, PowerPC and Alpha of '90ies consumer grade
They all worked. MIPS was more of a development choice, something to develop WinNT on internally along side x86 to ensure CPU architecture portability of the source code. PowerPC was absolutely consumer grade. Alpha was for power users.
Microsoft was working with Apple on a PC standard that would run both Windows and Mac OS. This was PowerPC based. Apple bailed at the last minute. One system that could run both Windows and MacOS, dual boot either, would have been popular as we eventually saw with Apple's
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Yeah my uncle was fairly senior in time at MS in australia, and if I remember right they where fairly excited about NT4 for the Alpha.
They ended up selling literally a handful of copies at best in the entire country, so dumped it later on. I guess folks that buy Alphas where more the mainframe/mini crowd who where more interested in Unix and VMS than Windows. While I guess Microsoft did have the rather odd notion (Something MS folks believed religiously and everyone else thought riseable) that Windows could
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Held back by binary legacy (Score:2)
Consumers decided Intel.
Yes, and consumers' decision was mostly influenced by the closed-source ecosystem that Microsoft has fostered:
too much binary backward compatibility holding back the move to any new fancy architecture, when your business depends on so much legacy blobs (some bought from 3rd party who might not want to waste resources making a port, or might have even gone belly up since; some in-house developed business code, that noboddy understands well enough to be able to port... that's if the source code isn't even los
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Consumers decided Intel.
Yes, and consumers' decision was mostly influenced by the closed-source ecosystem that Microsoft has fostered:
Microsoft enforced no such thing. FOSS software runs on Window, many of the most important FOSS apps for consumers.
too much binary backward compatibility holding back the move to any new fancy architecture
Note we are talking about WinNT4 being offered on three non-Intel architectures. PowerPC and Alpha being quite new and fancy at the time. Microsoft was offering options, not holding anyone back.
(Counter-point opensource ecosystems like Linux ....
A false counterpoint. You don't need Linux for FOSS. Again, major FOSS apps run just fine on Windows and macOS. Matter of fact almost all FOSS software runs on Mac given its BSD internals. Most FOSS soft
Most of the software (Score:2)
Microsoft enforced no such thing. FOSS software runs on Window, many of the most important FOSS apps for consumers.
Yes, opensource software like VLC and GIMP exist on Windows.
BUT (my main point), back in the days of "WinNT on non-Intel CPUs" if you lpeek over the shoulder of the average Windows user, most of the application most typical users would be interacting with are commercial blobs, a ton of which Microsoft doesn't have direct access of their source code.
And so while Microsoft themselves could port their own Office suite to tons of architectures, they can't really recompile all those 3rd party blobs to the new ar
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BUT (my main point), back in the days of "WinNT on non-Intel CPUs" if you lpeek over the shoulder of the average Windows user, most of the application most typical users would be interacting with are commercial blobs, a ton of which Microsoft doesn't have direct access of their source code. ... Microsoft didn't literary force this, but they strongly pushed toward a market where everyone releases their own blobs.
No they did not. They did not care if an app was commercial or FOSS. They did not care if a commercial app was offered with a source license or a binary only license. Microsoft offered a platform where you could run whatever you want. It was the users choice. Or a developer's choice whether to support Win32 or not.
Microsoft offered options, but all the legacy x86 blobs that users wanted to run for their daily routines held them back. And I am arguing the prevalence of blobs in that ecosystem is partially an indirect influence of Microsoft.
Binary blobs held no one back. Matter of fact binary blobs were sometimes necessary to get proper functionality on Linux.
A false counterpoint. You don't need Linux for FOSS.
Yes, all the *BSDs, Haiku, Redox OS, etc. exist.
And Windows and macOS, the commercial closed operating system.
The main point is that back in the exact same era, if you peek over the shoulder of the typical Linux user, much more FOSS software would be typically run.
Linux users r
It's like that 1989 Batman movie. (Score:3)
Joker (nVidia-ARM): You idiot! You made me!
Batman (Intel ARC): I made you. You made me first.
Vicki Vale (AMD): Quietly watching these two slug it out.
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The Joker; they're a founding member of ARM.
Software??? (Score:5, Interesting)
And exactly what software can I run (and at what speed) on Windows on ARM?
Can I install my own or am I chained to the windows store?
Re:Software??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Without x86 support, Microsoft is going to have just as hard of a time getting people on these "new" computers as they did getting people on Windows RT.
Now Microsoft could go Apple's route and create something akin to Rosetta for Windows (WOWARM?), but unlike Apple, Microsoft will have a much harder go of it, due to having a lot more packages over a greater period of time to support. If PCEmu or x86Box is any indication, Microsoft might be better off emulating the older 32bit code. (Although that only works well up to the Pentium II era.) Maybe they'd cut the 32bit support and only allow 64bit apps to make their lives easier, but that's still going to hurt them I'd imagine. (Especially in the home market where the reason most still have a PC is due to games.)
Of course, it goes without saying that the jailed to the Windows Store crap would make these new Arm-PCs DOA. Much like Microsoft doesn't want to be dependent on Intel, many don't want to be dependent on Microsoft as the sole source of their applications.
Re: Software??? (Score:2)
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They already have an x86 and an x64 translation layer, and it works pretty well TBH. I currently run an M2 Mac with ARM64 Windows 11 within Parallels, and excepting drivers (like for VPN access) all the software I've thrown at it has run well and, frankly, flown - even AutoCAD 2024.
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Windows RT was such a trainwreck, including their efforts to market it and educate buyers. For a brief time I fielded a lot of tech support calls from confused users who wanted a Windows tablet, bought the cheap option and then were confused when they couldn't install all their usual x86-64 software.
Lots of returns, and probably lots of e-waste.
Re: Software??? (Score:2)
Emulation of Windows is the way to go. It would be great if Windows 12 would just scrap the NT kernel and put it in a container with a GUI layer. The problem on ARM is that except for the Apple stuff, not a single ARM chip has an x86 accelerator on die and most ARM chips are either built for low-cost, low-power applications, therefore not having the juice for QEMU emulation, or built for the server/workstation end and thus not cost effective to put in a desktop. Microsoft doesnâ(TM)t have a history of
Re: Software??? (Score:3)
Windows for ARM can already run Intel binaries. There was a limitation, IIRC, that it could only run 32-bit Intel binaries, but I think thatâ(TM)s resolved now. It would be more convenient to users if they could add support for universal binaries.
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I do not know about you, but on the for work workstations I do not run much more than a web browsers and an application development environment. I am sure I can compile wireshark and its framework on just about anything.
The company that is best at product marketing while also packing tra
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You can run a web browser and anything that runs in a web browser. Which covers like 75% of the applications these days.
Basically once you have Adobe's products and MS Office products as browser-based with a subscription fee, it almost doesn't matter what CPU architecture you happen to have in front of you.
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I think it is fair to say that Apple has a much smaller library of applications to deal with on their platform. And Apple did the smart thing and phased out the translation software, and pushed software companies like Adobe down the path of using native code (and newer APIs) in the PPC to x86 switch. I view Rosetta 2 for x86-64 to ARM support as a return to the same strategy. I suspect Apple will again push companies off the old architecture and onto the new. And that a future version of macOS will drop sup
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Apple is a master of relatively seamless architectural changes and I'm pleasantly impressed with Apple Silicon, but I'm concerned they will prematurely cut off support for the latest generation of Intel Macs. For all the environmental friendliness they tout, I won't be surprised to see a bunch of 4 year old Macbooks go to the curb because the OS can no longer be updated. (Opening up some drivers for Linux or at least maintaining them for Windows and Boot Camp would be fine, but ain't gonna happen.)
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I think it is fair to say that Apple has a much smaller library of applications to deal with on their platform.
In theory. But if you look at what people run on a day-to-day basis it's not many apps. If binary to binary translation covers 98% of users it will be wildly successful.
Apple has about 30K app on their Mac App Store, Microsoft about 100K apps on their Windows App Store. These represent the training/testing sets that Apple and Microsoft have for their respective technologies. Apple's stuff reportedly works extremely well. Reports from Windows 11 ARM running on ARM based Macs suggest success for Microsoft
Intel to ARM converter, or dev recompiles (Score:2)
And exactly what software can I run (and at what speed) on Windows on ARM?
Like Apple, it is a simple software recompile for most developers, plus there is an Intel binary to ARM binary conversion tool that works for most x86-64 apps. Since its a one time conversion on first run its pretty efficient. Not as good as a recompile but close. Apple had done amazingly well with this sort of tech.
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Unlike Apple, Microsoft's efforts on ARM have always felt like an afterthought.
I vey much doubt that. Since the first day of Windows NT development, or should I say OS/2 3.0 development, NT has been CPU architecture portable. Originally a MIPS CPU was used alongside Intel for this purpose during development. Eventually PowerPC and Alpha were added but these were commercial offerings, for a while. Consumers may have said no thank you but Microsoft still need to use something other than Intel internally to ensure the portability of the NT source code. Maybe the moved to PowerPC, maybe t
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I vey much doubt that.
Why would you doubt that? While MS made a big show about the Windows on ARM platform when they launched in 2012, the progress and focus for MS was not a lot. Bear in mind that MS got 64 bit x86 emulation working AFTER Apple did it. 64 bit x86 chips first came out in 2003 with AMD. ARM announced 64 bit ARMv8A in 2011. Windows RT was launched in 2012. It was not until 2022 before Windows on ARM could do x86 64 bit emulation.
Since the first day of Windows NT development, or should I say OS/2 3.0 development, NT has been CPU architecture portable. . .
And what does any of that have to do with the known history of Windows on ARM developm
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I vey much doubt that.
Why would you doubt that? While MS made a big show about the Windows on ARM platform when they launched in 2012, the progress and focus for MS was not a lot.
ARM was not ready for a PC desktop until recently. Basically not until Apple proved it was a serious competitor to Intel. Prior to ARM based Macs what was the ARM desktop, a Raspberry Pi? ARM was for mobile until recently, where battery consumption outweighed performance.
Bear in mind that MS got 64 bit x86 emulation working AFTER Apple did it.
Windows NT and Mac OS X are peers in terms of CPU architecture portability, modern OS' with protection, multitasking, etc. And Windows got there much earlier and had a broader selection of CPUs. Apple does not lead Microsoft here. Where App
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And exactly what software can I run (and at what speed) on Windows on ARM? Can I install my own or am I chained to the windows store?
Here is the problem so far with Windows on ARM. It was not compatible with Windows on x86. So in the past, consumers had to get the Windows ARM version of whatever software they wanted. MS did have an emulation mode but that did not perform very well and was limited to 32 bit. Currently 64 bit emulation is possible however do not expect good performance on all hardware yet. Thus Windows on ARM was pretty stagnant even though MS has been trying for a decade.
Incidentally the one company that helped MS with AR
Can't fool me again (Score:2)
A long time ago, I began buying nVidia graphics cards as opposed to those from companies like 3DFX, S3, ATI, and so forth. Only ATI lives on as AMD's graphics division. The rest are dead, and given how awful nVidia has become, I regret briefly spending money on their products before switching to DAAMIT. Don't make the same mistake I and many others made when it comes to JHH and his company.
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