Windows on ARM Is Here to Stay

I would posit in both cases the problem is extreme financialization. Both companies had such a large market share (and even a monopoly in certain segments) that the much-quoted but apropos Steve Jobs quote [1] applies. All these modern CEOs seem capable of doing is stock buybacks, cutting costs and raising prices where they can.

In the 2000s, Intel faced a serious challenge from AMD with the Athlon/Opteron architecture. Intel's failures were a continuation of their Pentium 4 architecture and the company was only saved by the Pentium 3, which became the Pentium-M and the Centrino platform then the Core Duo and the modern CPUs we have now. They're all Pentium 3 descendants.

What we've seen over the last decade is most people have enough CPU power so the move has been towards smaller, cheaper and more energy-efficient CPUs. We've seen this in phones and then tablets and now CPUs. Apple's move to ARM was really the nail in the coffin for Intel as it culminated a decade of not being able to respond to the market.

Intel is seemingly unable to respond to this trend. All Intel CPUs still have super-high TDPs and haven't adopted any silicon to boost AI performance, which is increasingly going to matter. I fully expect this to be further integrated into the M4 and later CPUs.

I, too, expect Windows on ARM to be here to stay because there are simpnly too many advantages to the platform and it's going to eat away at the consumer market in a big way because ARM laptops and tablets will give people what they want: smaller, cheaper and more energy-efficient computers.

Meanwhile Intel just goes from disaster to disaster. The move to 10nm became a running joke almost to the level of Duke Nukem Forever. Intel's once-legendary fab ability is seemingly being eclipsed by TSMC and ARM chips seem to be the primary beneficiary of that.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM

After 10+ years of Windows ARM, I find these basic toolchain gaps inexcusable.

For what it’s worth, WSL on Windows ARM64 is pretty much great.

[0] I mean, they're not Google

> Snapdragon chips really shine in multicore benchmarks, overtaking all the other CPUs aside from Apple’s M2 Max and M3 Max.. Snapdragon laptops are generally cheaper than their Intel or AMD counterparts.. Qualcomm Dell XPS 13 is $200 cheaper and the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is $150 cheaper.. [upcoming Intel] Lunar Lake will be closer in design to Apple Silicon, with RAM incorporated into the chip itself, and Intel claims that getting rid of hyperthreading will decrease power consumption, so laptops with these chips will supposedly get better battery life

https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/qualcomm-spends-million...

> on-device AI features will eventually receive widespread adoption, but it will take several years for that to happen. However, the simple fact that we have another CPU option over Intel and AMD is already a big win among consumers.. the improved battery life with comparable performance that Snapdragon laptops bring will force x86 chip manufacturers to innovate on power efficiency or be left in the dust.

On another note: Windows have (by default) tons of legacy to support a lot of different hardware Am I wrong to assume that that most drivers on ARM cpu running through virtualization? Does Microsoft actually build them or get them from partners to install on the system

I’ve got zero tolerance for crashes and weird behavior and edge cases and whenever I tried ARM servers that’s exactly what I got.

Computing is unreliable enough without throwing arm into the windows world… it’ll be painful for sure. I can’t see any benefit in arm so compelling that I’d want it over the standard cpu architecture.

Compatibility is everything. It was different for Apple because they control the entire ecosystem and frankly their software engineering on cross compatibility was startlingly good. Microsoft doesn’t have that level of control plus it’s got windows cruft plus drivers and third party hardware and software and it’s hard to imagine a seamless experience. Why would I buy that…. what’s the benefit?

Same for Windows on x86. The end.