Microsoft Is Making Its Own CPUs…Maybe

Could Microsoft be preparing to make its own ARM CPUs to take on Apple Silicon?

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[MrGubboGabbo]

Are they going to be called MicroChips? if not i don't want one

[CyanRooper]

Microsoft already have a developer kit called Project Volterra for making Windows apps for ARM so they're definitely serious about making their own ARM chips.

[katrinabryce]

It took Apple 10+ years to get to the M1. Their first release was the A4, which was OK but nothing special relative to the competition.

[RedneckIrishman]

Given the power consumption in MSFT Data centers (The majority of it runs on Intel cpus), I suspect this development would be more of a data centre centric move in the first few iterations of any architecture they come up with. Dispersing all the heat generated by large data centers can cost as much, if not more, than the energy used to power the servers. So a more power efficient cpu, that runs cooler, is an obvious target to aim for. Any savings made via power efficiency would, of course, be an internal profit used for greater expansion and capacity of it's existing data center estate. Just my 2 cents.

[daveg]

As a software developer for 40+ years, including CP/M and MS-DOS, I am ok with this as long as Microsoft also takes their development languages like C# and API's like dotNET along for the ride, so that I can simply re-target and recompile for their other processors or computer products. I have more than a decade invested into dotNET alone.

[megatronmegatron]

Microsoft also made an attempt to make a RISC CPU in the 90's. It was mentioned by one of their VP's in an interview about past projects.

[slizgi]

Without a translation layer like Roseta2 on macOS, to emulate x86 on ARM, or just straight adding x86 hardware translation in to the chip it will be a failure. Apple users are more or less used to apple ditching support after a couple of years for their software, on a Windows I just can run apps that run 20 years ago, mostly without bigger problems, and if they do hard cut off support to move to ARM it might bite them in the ass, because they make Windows users mad.

[dennisfahey]

Keep in mind that Amazons entire product line is based on a very narrow codebase and ARM licensing. Also keep in mind that many many user experiences (aka apps) are now Cloud and Web centric. Wintel was for desktop and server - ARM fits nicely into Internet appliances. Although one could argue x86 SOCs are decent - just higher priced. Back to servers - the big mama jamma out of Alibaba is 128 cores / 128 PCI lanes ARM based. Scales well with a lower power consumption. That matters in massive DCs.

[Travox]

"Redmond, start your photocopiers". Apple in WWDC 2004

[AndyHerbert]

To think that the surface lineup, which when it launched almost 10 years ago wasn't exactly seen as a good laptop system or tablet system- is now somehow still going successfully and being used as the center of windows for ARM

[nigralurker]

I got a Zune in Xmas 2006 when I was 17. Thing was damn impressive for an ipod competitor.

[lucun_]

Microsoft also has incentive to do so to build up their tooling for their cloud business. AWS and Google already make custom chips for a lot of processing and cloud workloads.

[savagepro]

Linus: Microsoft Is Making Its Own CPUs
Computers: oh boy, reboots at the binary level

[lpnp]

Sounds like a great way to commoditize user information at a hardware level.

[bartabum]

I really hope we see broader adoption of Windows for ARM apps to better support Windows for ARM virtualizing on M1/M2 Macs

[Kchandrashekaran]

Microsoft has already modified windows heavily, now updates are easier to install and all system apps get updated through store, not from windows update.
All these are probably part of bigger plan to keep software ready for major shift like cpu change, AI integration etc.

This all started from 2019, to make windows easily manageable

[username]

The SQ1 was based on Qualcomm CPU cores.

[SplitScreamOFFICIAL]

the reason why microsoft is doing is is because companies want to charge licencing fees to use those Machine Learning accelerators, and the prices are insane, look into how much Qualcomm's XR2 accelaterator license costs

[jookm]

I liked the Zune. I had the old hard drive one which I broke then had a Zune Nano, and finally bought the ZuneHD right as they were being discontinued. I still have those last two. Sad to see it go.

[whitekong]

Imagine all the built in malware-esk they will bake into that chip.