ARM race is on. Windows, Nvidia goes for it.

NVIDIA announces Project Denver ARM CPU for the desktop -- Engadget

 

Microsoft confirms ARM support is coming in Windows, will play nice with SoCs too -- Engadget

 

they are on 28nm tech, and intel will be stuck at 32nm for a year .. so they want to try to take a bite out of their share. I'm sure they are only trying to be competitive on a price per watt or price per Ips. --assuming the 28nm arm procs they are making are competitive (or else, why bother?), intel will still be back in the lead (in every way, not just in raw horsepower per chip) 6 months down the road when they go to 22nm, and intel will keep that lead at least until 2013, when they both are on 22nm.

the growth in computation power on nvidia's side is staggering from 26nm to 22nm, they must scale multi-core really really well. if it wasnt for that 400% improvement in 2 years thing, I'd guess they don't have a chance against intel at 2013. as it is, I can see why microsoft went ahead with windows 8 port to ARM

 

Great news. More CPU competition can only be a good thing for consumers.

 

"nVidia, the way it's meant to be computed"?

But in any case, yes, more CPU companies means better pricing when they start price wars.

Frankly, I'm surprised it took this long, what with how much GPUs are becoming more like CPUs and vice versa.

 

Finally, we can hope to break away from the Intel X86 monopoly. I hope nVidia and ARM succeed in kicking Intel's butt.

 

I'm with you on that one. Especially since Intel basically forced nVidia out of the integrated graphics market. nVidia's chips always spanked Intel's.

 

It is not about Buttkicks, it is about performance, instruction set and backward compatibility.
ARM architecture is still not up to it in these aspects.
Intel/AMD didn't start developing x86 just yesterday.
You can't just say REPLACE IT and fairy dust all the problems.

 

it's nice to see windows spread to all those platforms. but all applications not written in 100% .net need at least some recompiling, rewriting, or what ever.

windows on arm: say goodbye to 100% of the apps you're used to. it's a 100% break to backwards compatibility

and that's the real reason we're "stuck in x86". not the os. the apps.

 

There were Windows NT for MIPS, PPC, Alpha, iA64.

 

baclward compatibilitie will die with the arm port

and it seem like a really abd thing for us gamer cause any one feel like runing crysis in an emulator

how ever the price war is a good thing i hope that x86 will remain but that arm will be good enough to force intel and AMD to set the devlopement speed of x86 to light speed

an other good thing is that the arm port of window will force them to rework much of the low level thing that are lurking the window core that should have been taken care long ago
this also makes it clear why microsoft began reworking the core and thing like miniwin or what was it called

 

I'm not worried about backwards compatiblity. Sometimes you have to move forward with a clean slate. Consoles are far more efficient than PC's because they don't have to deal with all the backwards compatiblity baggage that x86 does. If nVidia/ARM get enough developers on board that port over their games and applications, then a gaming notebook based on such a device could be quite a contender theoretically. I'm excited to see what they bring.

 

Or you know rather than run it on an emulator, demand that Crytek open up their source code and rebuild it and all their libraries for ARM. It isn't too much, but assuming that they only rely on underlying Windows libraries (and not 3rd party ones) it should be relatively simple (and I really mean relatively). Why they'd go through with this effort is beyond me... So enhanced VM support (I've no clue how current ARM processors are with virtualization support) will be necessary in the future. Doing an ARM port of Windows should not necessitate a complete rewrite of the kernel, unless they wrote it in x86 ASM, which would be odd at best. (It is probably C or C++, which has had cross architecture compilers in place for some time). Judging by the version code shown for Windows 8 thus far (6.2), I doubt they did a complete rewrite. /Random speculation.

What we do know is that ARM and Windows 8 will work together, and that Nvidia is working on a desktop ARM processor (and presumably an entire system). This to me sounds win-win. Although most applications won't be built for ARM, a lot will (the most common applications anyway). I can see this as Microsoft's attempt to stave off Chrome by targeting new markets.

With rumors of Apple's ARM endeavors, and Chromes attempt to erode the netbook category from Windows, this response is expected. I just hope they port it well and that the larger developers follow suite.

 

Where is AMD in all of this?

 

Extended virtualization support might help compatibility. We are probably talking about a 2 years development time at minimum.
I think this means that also many other ARM CPU makers might want to get a piece of the pie and i would say that if there are small ARM makers they'll be bought by big ones.

AMD seems to be in x86. I only hope that Fusion works or they risk just be ATI-GPU maker...

 

I foresee a similar outcome. If x86 doesn't stay dominant (and/or they continue their lack of real competition) the company will end up being sold in parts, much like ATI. Well, Global Foundries is already independent so it is likely stockholders have been preparing for such an eventuality. Then again, AMD could just license ARM cores as well, who knows...

 

For me, the first target for Windows on ARM hardware is power efficiency with all day operation without a big battery. Fully-functional Windows ipad equivalents is one potential market.

John

 

it's about as "simple" as porting stuff to 64bit. which, as known, every game in the last 10 years did because it was that simple. oh wait..

 

Which is why I said no one will do that for old games. But the new games are in 64 bit flavors quite often. Imagine when porting actually expands the market (ARM based Windows devices will not be able to run 32bit x86 applications successfully) they are much more likely to make sure future products include ARM support.

 

i'm less optimistic. i see too much how it normally never happens that apps get updated for such stuff.

the arm hw will initialy not be targeted at games like crysis, but portable low end systems => it won't be an interesting target to port to. the result: they might be interesting only years later, when gaming on arm is better than gaming on x86. and at this point, all current games are very old, and most likely porting won't happen anymore.

switching platforms is always hell in such cases. we will just lose all the apps we had now, and will need emulators for it. that's the most likely outcome.

and i see no gain from going arm actually (i understand microsoft doing it). i'll stay x86 for quite a while for sure.

 

Many current games use Unreal Engine 3, which already builds on ARM systems... I believe Nvidia and Epic were demonstrating Dungeon Defenders. But you're still right in regards to Crysis, most past and current games will not be ported. I suspect future (after the release of the Windows SDK for ARM) games will, however.

Personally, I'd love an ARM based Windows laptop. ARM has always been power optimized, unlike Intel and especially AMD. I think this will lead to longer life in netbooks and ultrathins -- which no one expects to play Crysis anyway.

 

those are not portable builds per se. those are specific versions for each platform to put to use.

intel by now is VERY power optimized (esp. check out their ulv). i would not take an arm in my laptop, as i don't want even lower than atom performance in there.

but there's the problem i stated: there won't be game ports onto arm for a loong time, as it's not a target gaming platform for a long time.

the good thing that might come out of it, is intel dropping atom for their power optimized setups, but instead push their ulv line. more products in that spectrum, lowered costs would result in great performance with long batterylife.

and in some years, we'll get memristors based systems anyways. systems that don't have to be "on" while not doing anything. that will be the moment, where it doesn't matter if it's x86 or arm anymore anyways.


anyways, i'm just annoyed by arm right now. losing all backwards compatibility is simply not an option that people should be fine with. that will just drive even more "all into the cloud, all on webapps, all just rented and not your own" stuff. that's the real goal of the industy right now. and it's a goal i can't support.

 

A little extreme on the all into the cloud but i get your point and it isn't a good way to go. I wouldn't say thats where the industry is going....just Apple and Apple sucks

 

this windows as it is right now is exactly as functional as google chrome os, which is essentially a 100% cloud machine.

and yes, that's the goal of the industry. never sell, only rent. that way they can guarantee their profits to stay.

it's not a little extreme. gaming goes into the cloud, office apps, any communication, video editing, i'm just waiting for the first cloud dj app, thats the only one missing for me to move into the cloud. not that i want to. but everything else is already there..

 

I keep ARM at ARM's length.

 

So do you think all tablets, phones with ARM will not have games?

 

not the existing ones, no. not like they would have enough power to run them, anyways. (talking about windows games, stuff that's f.e. on steam).

 

I don't like cloud computing because control is ceded to the servers and all servers are belong to evil corporations.

 

It will be ARM CPU's+Nvidias GPU's. At least is what Nvidia says.

?Project Denver? Processor to Usher in New Era of Computing NVIDIA

Note i don't have no technological knowledge to know if this is just a bunch of BS:

 

+1, totally agreed.

I'd love to see any ARM based notebook nowdays (since I don't care about Windows). There is Toshiba netbook with Android, but it's small. I'd like to see something around 13". I can imagine this awesome battery life...

 

i never said i liked cloud but i don't see everything going to cloud. Also corporations are not evil. Corporations do not make their own actions. Its the people who run it so people are evil not corporations.

 

DCMAKER,

What is the effective difference then?

 

I don't want the could either, i want to own things and if not i just go to Linux route.

 

everything is going to the cloud. every company is only driving into that direction without looking back. try to find a new application that is not bound into some webservice that you have to rely on to actually use it.

 

Just because the 'company' is driving off a cliff, doesn't mean you have to follow.

Corps love the 'cloud' because it puts them in control of everything - how you access your data (on their terms) - how you manipulate your data (using their software) - how much you pay for the privilege of using your data (monopoly/slave nation?). Not to mention how much they can make selling your data - yes, that's part of the 'cloud' experience too.

 

and that's why i like to stay with my x86. there i have all my apps, i payed for them, i can install and use them.

windows on arm is as useful right now as chrome os. can do everything you need if you rely on webapps. and that, i don't want to.

my own apps that i develop, though, they'll run on arm, too. .net apps will work without any change. but there are still too few of them out there sadly.

 

that's a good catch -- it might be that nvidia is planning with maxwell to bring in some gpgpu instructions and scale out the processor for the games-graphics intensive stuff. if they do that, they don't even need to out x86 cpu with their 22nm build, because game devs will want to compile optimized drivers for the new gpus.

once you port nearly -all- the workload over to gpu for x86, its almost a painfree port of the logic to ARM.