Memory access on the Apple M1 processor

Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by ChuckNorris89 on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @05:41PM (#25663680)

Microsoft doesn't need to acquire Intel, they need to do what Apple did and acquire a stellar ARM design house that will build a chip with x86 translation, tailored to accelerate the typical workloads on Windows machines and sell those chips to the likes of Dell and Lenovo and tell developers "ARM Windows is the future, x86 Windows will be sunset in 5 years and no longer supported by us, start porting your apps ASAP and in the mean time, try our X86 emulator on our ARM silicon, it works great."

Microsoft proved with the XBOX and Surface series they can make good hardware if they want, now they need to move to chip design.

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by sitkack on Thursday January 07, 2021 @12:07AM (#25667489)

Microsoft has a pretty good relationship with AMD from the Xbox. AMD already made an Arm Opteron. Windows has been multiplatform since NT 3.1 (Alpha, MIPS) and then in 3.51 adding in PowerPC. You can download Windows for Arm for free and run in on a Raspberry Pi.

Microsoft has at least one homegrown processor that it has ported Windows and Linux to with the confusingly named 'Edge'.

https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/18/microsoft_e2_edge_win...

Microsoft doesn't even _need_ to target Arm, they could easily team up with AMD or go the whole thing solo and target anything from RISC-V, Arm to an in-house ISA.

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by mietek on Thursday January 07, 2021 @05:17AM (#25669377)

> Windows has been multiplatform since NT 3.1 (Alpha, MIPS) and then in 3.51 adding in PowerPC.

What was the last version of Windows to support either of these platforms?

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by jeffbee on Thursday January 07, 2021 @10:01AM (#25671809)

PowerPC was the last architecture standing. It was supported by NT 4.0 SP2 (technically this means Microsoft supported it on paid support contracts as recently as 2006).

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by gsnedders on Thursday January 07, 2021 @11:11AM (#25672686)

Windows Server 2008 R2 supported Itanium.

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by sroussey on Thursday January 07, 2021 @01:07AM (#25667781)

There are rumors of Ryzen CPUs with ARM ISA, but I think AMD has enough on its plate.

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by ralfd on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @05:56PM (#25663852)

Apple has at most 10% of the computer market and is just one player among many. I am skeptical Microsoft with their 90% dominance would or should be allowed this much power over the industry.

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by sjwright on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @10:09PM (#25666801)

The traditional personal computer market isn't nearly as important as it used to be. However you slice the pie, there's no way you can define the pieces to be 10% Apple and 90% Microsoft with a straight face.

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by mechEpleb on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:21AM (#25669780)

90% dominance of what is increasingly a small niche market. Apple controls a large fraction of the mobile device market, and everything else runs linux.

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by icedchai on Thursday January 07, 2021 @05:43PM (#25678705)

The fact is outside of the tech scene, most businesses and consumers runs Windows. To say this is a "small niche market" is laughable. Microsoft is everywhere.

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by bradknowles on Saturday January 09, 2021 @10:34PM (#25709296)

Compare how many millions of desktop PCs there are in the world, versus the billions of mobile devices.

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by eyelidlessness on Thursday January 07, 2021 @01:50AM (#25668007)

From what I understand, Microsoft is excellent at hardware design. They’re just focused on a different market (services->business rather than consumers->services)

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by f6v on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @05:28PM (#25663517)

> Microsoft acquisition of Intel

Could that possibly be approved by governments?

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Re:Memory access on the Apple M1 processor by gigatexal on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @05:44PM (#25663703)

Nope. Not a lawyer but I doubt it at all.

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