Microsoft's wasted potential: Windows on ARM

Thanks to Apcsilmic for sending the Dot 1 Mini PC so I could test Windows 11 Pro on ARM!

(Apcsilmic did not pay for this video or have any input into the content of the video, but they did send me this device for testing, therefore I've added the sponsorship disclaimer.)

#Microsoft #ARM #Windows

Contents:

00:00 - Microsoft's problem
00:27 - A Snapdragon Mini PC
02:04 - Windows on ARM
04:45 - Performance
06:18 - Power consumption, clock speeds, thermals
08:44 - What about Linux?
09:35 - Microsoft can do better

[johnmiller]

Windows on ARM will always be a big deal to me in my life, I was part of the original project getting the Windows kernel working on ARM a decade ago. Even back then I saw it as an enormous task to get it right and it never materialized. then was marketed badly and being locked to specific hardware killed it. It still makes me sad that one of the largest projects I ever worked on just still doesnt work even a decade later.

[CozyAlgorithmCave]

Apple already said that they would be open to the idea of native Windows (BootCamp) on Apple Silicon, Microsoft just needs to allow it, i'm hoping they do that as soon as their exclusivity deal with Qualcomm runs out.

[TechTechPotato]

I spoke with Qualcomm about this exclusivity deal - they said there isn't one. Simply put, they put engineers, $$$, and time with Microsoft to optimizing Windows on Arm for Qualcomm. Anyone else would have to do their own specific optimizations and work with Microsoft to do that, but no-one has. In terms of 64-bit translation, I was told by the guy in charge they said that instruction translation was easy enough, but more than half of the issues are due to bad software installing wrong drivers, referencing old/badly linked DLLs, and they've had to spend most of the time simply getting it to work first, before focusing on performance. Because the key market for QC for these devices is going to be premium commercial devices (Thinkpads), they're essentially using the 8cx family as the base line and everything else is entry - realistically it's the Nuvia core next year that's meant to bring the performance to the high-end. If you want, I could get you in contact with the team over there and they may be happy to answer your questions.

[archivushka]

3:48 that's bedrock, not java. The bedrock, formerly known as pocket edition, is designed with mobile processors in mind.

[the_beefy]

Lack of standardized bootloader processes on ARM is a major roadblock to standardizing OS adoption on the platform, thus forcing a large amount of work to building OS images for each specific SOC and board that's produced. The only benefit is to the SOC manufacturers, as they now have to be involved (and thus extra $$ for them) for any serious effort to support an OS on a given device.

[indask]

The chips are slowly but surely improving, this is a 7C which is the slowest available chip,
The SQ1 / 2 in the Surface Pro X is equivalent to a laptop 8th Gen I5 (Qualcomm 8CX/8CX Gen 2 are more or less equivalent in performance).
The 8CX Gen 3 is even faster but these are sold in quite expensive devices.

The main problem with these chips is (IMO) :
- The devices they are sold with are too expensive (it was like 1400$+ for the SPX)
- Chicken and egg : The devs wont port their apps since nobody has those devices, nobody wants to buy these devices since there's not apps.

[ShinyTechThings]

YES! It's like overclocking but just running at normal clock speeds with a giant fan😎

[N....]

2:14 PowerShell has always been unreasonably slow to give a prompt, even on my Ryzen 9 5950X. I don't know what they are doing to make it that slow but this isn't unique to Windows on ARM.

[joeg]

This is classic MS behavior. Develop something that’s usually still very rough, release many patches etc., then - it finally runs right: Bam, new Windows release. Rinse and Repeat. Plus, this device seems like it’s late to the party.

[josephvigneau]

Microsoft does have experience running Windows on non-Intel ISAs. Nearly 25 years ago, Windows NT 3.51 ran on Digital Alpha processors, and Digital provided a binary translation layer called FX!32 that could actually run x86 executables fairly decently.

[RodrigoDeVincenzoMonteiro]

Interesting results, thanks for bring up Apcsilmic test, looks promising when Windows ARM is out there. I've been using MacBook Air M1 8GB with Parallels 17 and Windows 11 insider preview very smoothly, even with x86 apps that Windows translates to arm64 (if I am no wrong).

[alexdev]

I think the exclusivity deal may be over already. Mediatek is now hiring devs for Windows on Arm bring-up and VMware has added official support for it in Fusion.

[MarkDavidMcCoskey]

Yeah, I picked up the Snapdragon Developer Kit (ECS LIVA Mini Box QC710 Desktop) with the same 7c, mostly out of curiosity.
I'm a fan of SFF and very-low-TDP computing, therefore ARM and U designated x86 CPU's.
This device is a start, but they really need to raise the bar.
Hopefully very soon we'll get Apple M1+ "equivalent" power in an RPi form-factor.
Pocketable Desktop Computing, be it Windows, Linux, Android, or other.
And it's nice seeing Asahi Linux become a thing.

[MrCed]

I was really curious about Windows on ARM since the days of the Snapdragon 835 and I bought a Galaxy Book Go that have the same config as the Dot 1. It wouldn't say it's great, I don't even know if I would call it good, but I paid 170$ for it, which is a pretty decent price. I tried a bunch of games and while 3D is basically a no-go, 2D indies are usually running okay-ish and you can run older 3D games from the late-90s to mid-00s with no major problems. The big problem for normal use if the stupidly small 4 GB of RAM, it's simply not enough for x64 emulation and the bare minimum for browsing with a native browser. I definitely didn't need it, I have a M1 MacBook Air, but I wanted to test the state of WoA.

I entirely blame Qualcomm for dragging down the industry in the last 6-7 years, including smartphones, tablets, laptops and smarwatches, thanks to Apple for finally showing that ARM can have good performances that can rival x86.

[ScottBurnette]

Win 11 on Arm works good in virtualiztion(Parallels) on my M1 MAC. I am able to run visual studio / sql server as a dev instance. Hopefully they will end these silly qualcomm agreements. Good video Jeff.

[deldarel]

Qualcom and Microsoft was a match made in hell.
I hope we get Tegra-based computers after the exclusivity deal is over.

[lukecastellan]

i'm waiting for a risc-v raspberry pi 🥺👀

[scbtripwire]

Holy crap, never would I have imaged a board developer create something where WiFi is faster than wired! They left *so* much performance on the table by using such an old standard through which to pass their wired network connection!

[denverag]

2:00 powershell taking a long time seems to be a problem with windows, i've had this happen on even 16 core processors, though that might be a side affect of windows running for 90 days without having access to ECC RAM

[DerekDavis]

So the ARM mini-PC is more energy efficient but it has a major flaw: it cannot run the huge WIndows x86 software base at full speed or full compatibility. Windows on ARM is a weak substitute.