I don’t really know if ARM adds benefits I’d really notice as an end user, but it’ll be interesting to see if this really goes through and upends the dominant architecture we’ve seen for really 40+ years.
Microsoft says “Prism” translation layer does for Arm PCs what Rosetta did for Macs
Submitted 5 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to technology@lemmy.world
https://arstechnica.com/?p=2025352
Comments
jqubed@lemmy.world 5 months ago
SMillerNL@lemmy.world 5 months ago
As an ARM Mac user, I wouldn’t trade all this new battery life for an x86 processor
aniki@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Second this. Not to mention INSTANT resume from suspend! It’s fucking crazy. I can use this thing ALL DAY doing webGL CAD work and Orca Slicer and barely scratch 50%.
stoy@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
As a potential iPad buyer, I would trade a millimeter of slimness for a vastly improved battery.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 5 months ago
If nothing else it breaks the stranglehold the 2.1 x86 licensees (Intel and AMD) have on the Windows market. Its just that that market is much MUCH smaller than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
_edge@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
So we replace two players with one (ARM)?
gregorum@lemm.ee 5 months ago
The benefits, basically, are that it can provide an architecture that is designed for modern computing needs that can scale well into the future. That means high performance with low power consumption and heat.
The x86/64 model has been up against a wall for a while now, pumping out red-hot power hogs that don’t suit modern needs and don’t have much of a path forward wrt development compared to ARM.
ozymandias117@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Huh?
32-bit ARM and x86 were both from 1985…
It did take ARM a lot longer to make 64-bit work
Uranium3006@kbin.social 5 months ago
I give ARM a decade before RISC-V eats it from the bottom up
PeachMan@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m not expert, but I can tell you that Apple Silicon gave the new Macbooks insane battery life, and they run a lot cooler with less overheating. Intel really fucked up the processors in the 2015-2019 Macbooks, especially the higher-spec i7 and i9 variants. Those things overheat constantly. All Intel did was take existing architectures and raise the clock speeds. Apple really exposed Intel’s laziness by releasing processors that were just as performant in quick tasks, they REALLY kicked Intel’s ass in sustained workloads, not because they were faster on paper, but simply because they didn’t have to thermal throttle after 2 minutes of work. Hell, the Macbook Air doesn’t even have any active cooling!
I’m not saying these Snapdragon chips will do exactly the same thing for Windows PC’s, obviously we can’t say that for sure yet. But if they do, it will be fucking awesome for end users.
simple@lemm.ee 5 months ago
You will definitely notice better battery life as an end user.
chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Prism is definitely a bad name , Edward Snowden knows
bleistift2@feddit.de 5 months ago
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Maybe their goal is to bury that prism and hope people forget?
aniki@lemm.ee 5 months ago
LOL if MS says it then you know it’s the exact opposite.
Ugurcan@lemmy.world 5 months ago
…only 4 years later.
simple@lemm.ee 5 months ago
It has more to do with manufacturers than Microsoft. Nobody was making high performance ARM chips, so there was never a market for windows on ARM until now
PeachMan@lemmy.world 5 months ago
…but Apple started making performance ARM chips 4 years ago
doleo@lemmy.one [bot] 5 months ago
One of the biggest problems I had with windows on ARM was drivers. Most of my devices that needed drivers didn’t have an arm compatible version available. This needs to change more urgently than simply being able to run software, for me, at least.
BigTrout75@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I don’t see this working. The reason that Apple and ARM work is because Apple controls the whole ecosystem on Macs.
_edge@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
While they are at it, can we get Prism for Linux?
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
I can hear the game launchers laughing. If EA doesn’t have a native version of their app out, that should be every reviewers first test.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 5 months ago
What Apple did for Macs when switching architectures, though, was to port their own software to the new architecture. Microsoft doesn’t even port fucking Minesweeper to ARM.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
this is for the transition. no point in porting your software if nobody has the hardware. This will get people to get the hardware, as they can just keep using the existing software, and wait until it’s properly ported
vanderbilt@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Nobody will buy the hardware if they can’t commit to supporting the software. In a previous role, I was responsible for advising purchasing decisions for my company’s laptop fleet. The Surface X (Arm edition) looked cool we weren’t willing to take the risk, because at the time Microsoft had far worse transitional support than they do now. It’s gotten better, but no one in their right mind is going to make the kind of volume purchases that actually drive adoption until they demonstrate they are in it for the long haul. It’s a chicken and egg problem, and Microsoft doesn’t care what hardware you are using, so long as it is running Windows or using (expensive) Windows services.
ch00f@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Apple released a native x86 version of Tiger with their first Intel Macs.
Miaou@jlai.lu 5 months ago
Microsoft really never do that port if they have a translation layer
JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Isn’t that the point? This new layer is supposed to make it easier to port everything, and they’re saying that’s what Rosetta did for Apple/Mac.
Revan343@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Translation layers aren’t porting
woelkchen@lemmy.world 5 months ago
No, the point of Rosetta was to be a stop-gap for 3rd party software because Apple did all porting in-house software long ago.
Prism is Microsoft’s tool for staying lazy. Microsoft ships ARM-based Surface tablets since 12 years!!!
In all architecture transitions (PPC->Intel then Intel->ARM), Apple Chess has always been a native port from day one.