[Info-vax] Microsoft On ARM Failure (was Re: VSI licensing policy (again))

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 9/23/2021 4:08 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 9/23/2021 3:20 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> On 2021-09-23 15:17:50 +0000, Dave Froble said:
>>> My question is, "why"?
>>>
>>> x86 is cheap.
>>> x86 is everywhere.
>>>
>>> What reason would Microsoft have to look at anything else?
>>
>> Price and power efficiency, same as usual. Arm can be cheaper, more
>> power-efficient, and fast.

>> Arm designs can also be juggernaut-scale, with 15 billion transistors in
>> one recent design; with fast big.LITTLE multiprocessor, a fast GPU,
>> statistics-math acceleration; that's a full-on SoC.  And
>> power-efficient. For comparison, Itanium Poulson and Kittson are ~3
>> billion. And Alpha and Itanium processors and servers never really saw
>> appreciable work on power efficiency.
>>
>> As for being "everywhere", the Arm installed base dwarfs those of Intel
>> and AMD and x86-64. And I'd suspect that Arm-related investments dwarf
>> Intel, too.
>>
>> Intel has spectacular processor design and processor fabrication
>> abilities, but they're also necessarily working within a massive
>> software installed base, and with a complex and accreted architecture.
>> And their fabrication efforts have been falling short. TSMC and others
>> have massive investments in fabrication, as well. Intel has discussed
>> using TMSC to fab parts of some Intel-designed components.

> I'm aware of many of the things ARM is used for.  Yes, they are quite 
> useful.
> 
> But, are they much better for desktop and notebook PCs?  I really can't 
> see them being much better in that environment.

Was x86-64 better than Alpha, Power, SPARC etc.?

In my best opinion: no.

But x86-64 won anyway, because being able to sell many hundreds of
millions CPU's for desktop PC's enabled Intel and AMD to invest
more in CPU development (design and fab) than DEC, IBM and
whoever actually produced SPARC.

The big advantage for ARM is not its technical specs, but the fact
that it sell billions for phones and that can fund CPU development.

> Now, talking Microsoft, how successful have they been outside the 
> desktop and notebook PCs?  Not very.  So, for them, x86 does the job.

MS is doing OK in servers. Very much behind Linux but way ahead
of traditional Unix, VMS etc..

Phones and tablets have been a long road of disasters.

> I have no idea of cost to get a decent WEENDOZE on ARM.  But whatever it 
> is, would doing so be of adequate benefit to Microsoft?  Maybe sometime, 
> but right now I don't see it.

Maybe for laptops due to less power consumption.

Arne