So, we're going back to the days of manufacturers having a completely custom software/hardware systems, one step at a time? Yes, ARM seems to be the standard, but once you start customizing, how long until Apple or Microsoft start making portability very difficult?
Apple making portability difficult, yes... Microsoft? I cant see it... Windows has been able to run on x86/x64, ARM, MIPS, Alpha, PPC and more since the beginning of time (well, NT4) and granted, they haven't released a lot of that code in a while, but i would guess its still there... remember, xbox360 was based on PPC...
Also, given they sell an OS to other manufactures to install on their own machines, they are going to keep that running for a while. Same with servers... Even in the Azure side, they are allowing enterprise and OEMs build Azure Stack. I cant see them locking it down... But Apple? yes... its already locked down...
Apple (M1) and Amazon (Graviton) are already out there marketing how great their chips are for various applications. They're not saying "ARM chips are great" they're saying "Apple silicon" or in the case of Amazon, "AWS Graviton processors are custom built by Amazon Web Services using 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores to deliver the best price performance for your cloud workloads running in Amazon EC2".
The thing to worry about is not them "locking it down" it's that they're building custom hardware that you can only access by renting cloud computing (EC2) or buying a complete machine (Apple).
Everything old is new again right? IBM, DEC, HP all built their own chips as part of their development. That got eaten alive by people like Sun and Apollo who started building workstations on commodity microprocessors, which got better and better so that even the "toy" computers (which is what the IBM PC started out as) became capable of eating their lunch, so they moved "into chips" with SPARC, PA-RISC, PowerPC which forced Intel to abortively try Itanium except that AMD kicked them in the nuts with AMD64. And that was where we lived until the computer architecture "for the masses" became the phone, with ARM chips and they started trickling down into the masses, and then Samsung and Apple started pushing advantages because they could customize their SoC chips and others couldn't, and all the while Intel kept adding specialized instruction sets to try to hold off ARM and AMD from their slipping hold on the Data center and what was left of the "laptop" business. Intel won some small battles in the "ARM Laptop" wars, with Microsoft's limited support for ARM applying pressure and Google's largely unsuccessful ChromeOS system of Chromebooks. But then Apple started making waves with their "tablet" the iPad and iPad pro and were getting margins that the laptop folks could only drool over so laptop makers started making bespoke chips to "up" their game like the pixel / pen processor in the Surface line. And as the iPad and the Surface and the other "ultralight" tablettops collided with overlapping features Apple went ahead and did the unthinkable and put a bespoke CPU into a laptop, and somehow once again managed to pull of huge margins.
That pretty much sealed the deal for any serious laptop makers and now we've got Microsoft embracing "alternate" instruction sets, Amazon embracing non-Intel data center architectures, and Apple out competing with a bespoke CPU in a bespoke laptop form factor.
<opinion!>
Intel is toast. (if you were still wondering) Which truly sucks because you really really want and need a chip fab business that can compete on the global scale. Intel needs to be that business for the US (Sorry Global Foundries you had your chance)
RISC-V is the new 8080A, FPGAs are the new SoC. Look for a huge number of computers available in all price points based on RISC-V sitting inside FPGA fabrics. This is going to be driven by open source tools and a set of open source HDL cores for all of the "essential" peripherals.
The consumer device kingmakers will be graphics architecture suppliers. The biggest differentiator for the next few years will be "can your graphics card do this?!"
</opinion!>
In the article, the source suggests Microsoft is exploring the idea of designing CPUs that could end up in future Surface devices. Certainly this makes some sense for the Surface Pro X, which is their very unpopular, poor-performing ARM device. And Microsoft has partnered with AMD for lightly customized AMD Ryzen APUs for their Surface Laptop. But Surface devices are a very small slice of Windows devices sold, because they are "premium" devices merely showing off what can be done with some integration between hardware and software. Most Windows computers are sold by HP, Dell, Acer and other smaller players. And most of them will be choosing between AMD and Intel for the next several years, at least, unless someone surprises with a high-performing ARM chip (and Microsoft fixes x86 emulation performance on ARM.)
> And most of them will be choosing between AMD and Intel for the next several years, at least, unless someone surprises with a high-performing ARM chip (and Microsoft fixes x86 emulation performance on ARM.)
Crystal ball tells me that someone will likely be Microsoft. If Microsoft has high performance Surface chips, there is little in the way of them licensing it to OEM partners. Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, etc... won't be able to compete with MS, due to the vertical integration between the Windows operating system and Microsoft silicon.
I wonder if Microsoft could gain ground on hp/dell etc by offering something new in terms of vendor management,device management, and maintenance. For example by offering laptop's on Azure with next day delivery. Vertical integration could make a lot of sense for that.
ARM is far less of a standard than the x86/PC ever was. There are countless ARM SoCs out there with zero public documentation, and while x86 has grown its share of secrets, the heritage of backwards compatibility means a lot of things remain the same.
(Incidentally, this is why I see efforts to remove backwards-compatibility from the PC as a hostile takeover and closing of the ecosystem.)
The only way you get a standard like that is if a really big player, in this case Microsoft, steps in and sets the rules and does the work. It's not like backwards compatibility had enough inertia to do this without having someone set the standard.
I think you're right. The economic incentives to differentiate their offerings are too strong to ignore. I predict it will be death by a thousand cuts, but by the time we're talking about AWS Graviton v7 or whatever versus the equivalent Microsoft and Google chips they will have diverged significantly. Enough that workload portability will not be trivial.
Just look how hard it is to migrate a significant application from Oracle to SQL Server or Postgres. It's easy for a trivial application, but there are lots of things to trip you up if you're migrating some big hairy complicated application.
If you can't run Java, C#, Node, Python, Ruby, Rust and Go at a baseline, you're really going to piss off enough developers that you won't get uptake/use on your custom chip platform.
I'm not sure how much we will see divergence, or how much it matters to most developers. If the tools can compile/target a given CPU and operate, devs largely won't care. Some will, most won't.
I don't think that MS and Amazon will stray too far from generally supported 64-bit arm instructions as a base. Maybe hardware optimizations that will work better in some workloads, but the baseline will likely work. This is only because of the diverse languages and tools that they need to support.
I think it's more about shoring up options, reducing costs and optimizing data center layouts. When targeting cloud, many apps are already scaling horizontally. So you don't need to perform like an M1 for general use as long as you can scale horizontally enough at a competitive price point, you can get a very long way without a ton of custom extension.
For Apples previous transition, 32bit to 64bit Intel, there were seamless universal apps made with the lipo tool, or Xcode config. It sounds like the same is still possible with an intel+arm binary.
Microsoft have considered their arm desktops as less serious than the others? If this new arm chip is meant to be an intel challenger that lower status must end. Universal binaries solve that too.
I think this is a very real concern. On the other hand, now that we’re approaching the limits of miniaturization specialized silicon seems like the clearest path, on the hardware side, to achieve continued performance gains.
IMHO system libraries and OS architecture are more important for portability than the processor. In that sense x86 Windows and x86 Macs are already about as unportable as you can get.
That has to be the shot, right? Why else would they have bought ARM?
Imagine this: stick an M1-like CPU and GPU combo on a PCIe card. Run the games entirely on the card, using the host system as merely a way to provide data to the card. In one shot, you murder the AMD and Intel processor market - everyone can just buy the cheapest model and still play games, saving their money for the unified GPU/CPU board. It also paves the way for eGPU products for laptops becoming more mainstream, and could work towards a play for the Shield to become a console competitor (if cannibalizing their existing console business is worth it to them).
NVIDIA has multiple generations of ARM SoCs. All of them are focused on GPU performance, though.
Also NVIDIA quit the mobile market a while ago. They are focused on Autonomous driving and embedded market. The only consumer product on the market with NVIDIA SoC is Nintendo Switch (which sells millions)
Here is an utterly terrifying thought for Intel: These Microsoft processors are clearly destined for their own servers. That’s bad for Intel, but not existential.
But what if Microsoft takes the lessons learned from making their server chips, and uses that to develop their own chips for the Surface. Again, bad for Intel, but hardly a huge deal.
But what if Microsoft then takes these Surface chips, and licenses them to Windows manufacturers to create the next generation of PCs... PCs that can compete with the M1 in terms of performance and efficiency.
For Microsoft, the benefits would be immense. Microsoft obviously knows Windows better than anyone, and would be able to tailor both the operating system and their CPUs to work far more efficiently than Wintel. This also increases Microsoft’s vertical integration and control over the Windows operating system, which they’d no doubt view as positive.
Microsoft becomes vendor of the Windows operating system and the CPUs it runs on. Intel systems would be at a permanent competitive disadvantage, as they don’t have the tight level of integration of Windows and MS-designed chips.
The off the shelf ARM core designs are likely good enough for Microsoft to create an offering that’s competitive with Intel, if they implement some tweaks to make it integrate and perform better with Windows (as Apple has done with M1 and macOS)
This might sound bonkers right now, but there’s definitely a version of the future where we’re buying a Dell XPS powered by Windows 10 and “Microsoft Silicon”
Interesting. To what degree did Microsoft design this chip? Did Qualcomm only provide the parts related to the radio? I was aware of SQ, but had assumed it was just a modified Qualcomm chip
Google, Amazon and Microsoft are all confirmed or rumoured to be working on their own ARM-based server CPUs. Apple is almost certainly mulling the option too. This has huge implications for x86. If all the big internet players start developing their own chips, we could very quickly see ARM powering a huge portion of the worlds servers.
This is all happening because ARM licenses it’s core design and ISA to anyone. It’s becoming relatively easy for major internet companies to design and implement their own bespoke CPU designs, optimized for their unique workloads. This means better performance, and lower energy costs, which is critical for these massive datacentres. The optimization benefits offered by that degree of vertical integration is something Intel may not be able to compete with.
For Intel this is obviously terrible news. Severs are their second biggest cash cow, and MS might end up being merely among the first of many internet companies to pursue their own CPU designs. This could foretell a rapid shift away from Intel and x86 in the server space.
This has implications for their PC chip business too. More money invested into ARM processors, means more R&D for ARM-based designs, which means better ARM chips in PC and mobile. This makes Intel less competitive in the PC space.
I would honestly rather Microsoft work directly with Intel/AMD/Nvidia to make a chip. I don't generally like Apple's direction to make the chips in house, and not sure I want Microsoft going the same path.
Assuming Microsoft has the talent to pull it off, Microsoft designing their own chips to run Windows is the best case scenario for performance. Apple has been a case study in how vertical integration, and how designing software and hardware together, can yield immense performance benefits.
However, it would be a terrible move for interoperability. OEMs would be inclined to purchase Microsoft's chips (MS's vertical integration would mean that their chips would outperform the competition when running Windows), and Microsoft could in turn restrict their chips to the Windows operating system.
I suspect one side aspect of the "integration" angle for Apple was that they were able to force the "recompile the world" moment on demand.
How much performance do you get by taking, say, code originally written for a 10-year-old compiler whose default target was vanilla i486, and build wuuth a recently built compiler? I'd expect wins from targeting a more modern instruction set, plus 10 years of general "we've learned more about optimization".
Microsoft can't do that without an architecture change, and if they do that, they're basically abandoning their primary push to consumers: your established software and workflow investments are no longer safe on Windows.
I understand the reasons, but I believe it is likely bad for the industry overall. Soon we'll have Apple, Microsoft and Google chips instead of AMD, Intel and Qualcomm chips; and they can leverage them to lock people even more into their walled garden ecosystems. That is a big worry to me, that feels like going backwards.
I know the direct impact is to Intel but think AMD just can’t catch a break. They finally have something going against Intel and now Apple and Microsoft will eat its lunch.
> Microsoft’s efforts are more likely to result in a server chip than one for its Surface devices
In my opinion, the majority of people have too much faith in their ability to predict the future.
I was terrible at predicting the real world performance of the Apple Silicon M1. It is, in fact, much better than I expected. On the other hand, Microsoft has thus far only had slightly modified AMD chips in their Surface Laptop, and poor performing ARM-designed Qualcomm chips in their Surface Pro X. Maybe I'll be bad at predicting the future, but I do not expect excellent performance out of Microsoft's Surface chips in the next 365 days. Probably longer.
In the meantime, more Windows computers will be sold than MacOS, and they will have mostly Intel chips, but an increasingly large number of AMD chips.
AMD has survived with less diverse revenue streams and much worse product portfolios. I'm optimistic for how they'll do over the next several years.
> I was terrible at predicting the real world performance of the Apple Silicon M1. It is, in fact, much better than I expected.
I expected what came out in the end. Apple would never put up the amount of money and the promise to ditch Intel if they were not absolutely certain that they could actually beat Intel performance-wise and have a working Rosetta to keep "old" software running.
The writing was on the wall for a long time, iPhone and iPad processor power has been taking decent shots at moderately powerful PC hardware for years now - the key thing why Apple didn't do it two years ago was software support and developer tooling, they wanted to avoid cloning the Windows RT fiasco which fizzled out because no one had working software and there was no translation layer.
Anybody remember the Zune? How different is Microsoft nowadays to make this actually work?
Most of their hardware products (not all... but most) end up being good, but not earth-shatteringly so, and either keep kind of moving on without taking any crowns (like Xbox), or slowly wither and die (Zune, Windows Phone).
Surface seems to be a good Halo product (not the game, ha!) so far, but I see very few Surfaces in the wild compared to any other laptop/tablet/desktops (mostly HP, some Dell, etc.).
After M1, I am definitely holding out for Mac Pro rather than going the AMD route. I am sure there will be a ton of professionals thinking the same. While I’ve always cheered for AMD as a company, I think Apple will gain substantial market share in the next decade. And AMD just doesn’t have the resources to fight that wave.
They aren't going to have their lunch eaten. Apple doesn't have nearly the volume to make a meaningful impact, neither does Microsoft. Neither of them make up a substantial segment of cpu sales.
It does put healthy pressure on them, but I think AMD is fine for the near future, they're also working on ARM chips as well.
If they are truly designing chips for Surface PCs... I have hopes, but Apple has a, what, 10-year head start?
Plus, it's very likely that unlike Apple, Microsoft will not be able to find a way to economically design their own CPU cores. They'll just be premade Cortex X1 or whatever licensed ARM core, but Apple will remain ahead with Firestorm/Icestorm and whatever comes after. Kind of like Qualcomm right now.
>They'll just be premade Cortex X1 or whatever licensed ARM core, but Apple will remain ahead with Firestorm/Icestorm and whatever comes after. Kind of like Qualcomm right now.
The chips don't have to be better than Apple, they just have to be better than Intel (and AMD).
The benchmarks of the Snapdragon 888, which utilizes the Cortex-X1 core design, look decent. I mean, they're not as good as the A14 and M1 with the Firestorm/Icestorm cores, but they're decent. Decent enough that Microsoft could likely build upon the X1 core and tweak those designs to have competitive performance to Intel.
The CPU on the Xbox was a slightly customized Pentium III. Microsoft didn't necessarily design it, they worked with Intel to ensure it met the requirements they had in mind for the Xbox.
The CPU on the Xbox 360 was co-designed with IBM, working to integrate their PowerPC-based PPE cores with an AMD GPU.
As an outsider looking in, Microsoft definitely dabbles its toes into designing chips but they've always done it with a partner already big in the space of chip design. Even with that Pluton "chip", its more about creating a standard secure enclave system between existing CPU manufacturers based on some Microsoft specifications rather than an entire chip design ready to get sent to a fab.
If the price, scale and power envelope is right, they can absolutely be mediocre. Server CPUs are core for core clocked much lower than consumer chips, cooling and power are huge issues.
If you can fit 500-1000 mediocre arm cores in the same space as 128 x86 cores at half the power/heat, it absolutely makes sense for something like Azure. They don't have to beat Intel/AMD on a core for core basis as long as they can compete on compute/space/power requirements horizontally.
It's not the best option for some loads, but is a good enough option for enough loads that the diversification can really work out. There's plenty of software/systems/services that don't need x86 per core performance and a single ARM core is enough per node.
>With the announcement from Marvell's exit [1] of ARM Server CPU it is now all but confirmed that Microsoft and Google are also working on their own ARM Server CPU.
I just wrote about that [2] few hours ago before this news pops up. Even Microsoft is abandoning the WinTel Alliance. I know there are still long way to go before the dismissal of x86 / Intel. On one hand they deserved it, for pathetic management in a hyper competitive market. On the other hand I kind of feel sorry for them. Seeing the Giant falling.
Me too. Except they really did deserve it but not because they could not compete, but because instead of trying to help board manufacturers making better computers they sued them.
Nvidia made an awesome chipset with a mini cpu made to handle basic instructions and used intel cpu for the high end computation. Intel sued them for not using their own Chipset.
The nvidia chip was a power saver in 2010. And it was the best of both worlds. Zotac put together their chipset and board into a mini itx pc. Fabless. Playing 1080p video.
That was the height of innovation and intel tried to keep a clamp on the market for fear of losing it.
And maybe that is the bottom line. They knew their product was dying. Their market was no longer going to grow. So they followed the 40% rule.
And tried to milk the market as much as they could.
Is there a world where Intel basically admits defeat and tries to become a major ARM player? If not Intel, some other company? It feels a bit weird that many different companies are designing their own bespoke chips. I can see how the biggest companies may have this expertise. But for everyone else, shouldn't there be someone they can purchase these Apple-like chips from? Maybe that company already exists?
Or maybe there's something about full integration that makes a custom-designed chip just so much better than a more general purpose chip?
> Is there a world where Intel basically admits defeat and tries to become a major ARM player?
These major strategy shifts require enormous courage, support and trust at the executive level, because they represent cannibalizing an existing (real) part of the business for the promise of future profits in a business that does not yet exist.
Kodak is a textbook example. Execs refused to pivot to digital cameras and associated products, because this would compete with the enormously profitable (and internally powerful) film business.
But for everyone else, shouldn't there be someone they can purchase these Apple-like chips from?
For servers there's Ampere and Nuvia. For ARM PCs I think Qualcomm/Samsung/MediaTek/etc. could easily build a pretty good SoC if there's obvious demand.
People are overreacting here. Intel is still very dominant in both desktop and server computing. Even if they continue screwing up at the rate at which they are right now, a complete reversal in their fortunes is like 15-20 years out, if not longer.
This is not about the ISA - it's about margins and the business model. CPUs have become a commodity and Apple, MS etc want control for lower cost and with the best (TSMC) process. Switching to Arm doesn't solve any of that.
I have seen Intel from both the technical side and the customer side. From a technical perspective, they are solid, diligent, but slow. They used to do a lot themselves, including IP blocks, simulators, timing tools, etc. I believe they are trying to adopt more modern design flows to keep up with the rest of the industry in terms of costs and schedules.
As a customer, I tried buying compute sticks in large quantities (i.e. 1000s) from a distributor but they would not extend pricing discounts until Intel approved them. In order to get approved, I had to take online training classes and quizes Intel offered. It was insane. No other company I dealt with required anything like that. I spent hours doing online training on their solutions and never was able to arrange a single discount. Finally said screw it and went with a different solution. Hands down the worst company I dealt with.
Apple designs all its shit.
So does google/facebook/microsoft/amazon
Huawei designs its own OS
China designs/manufactures its own chips too.
It's rumored more companies are designing their own OS
Readit News
Also, given they sell an OS to other manufactures to install on their own machines, they are going to keep that running for a while. Same with servers... Even in the Azure side, they are allowing enterprise and OEMs build Azure Stack. I cant see them locking it down... But Apple? yes... its already locked down...
The thing to worry about is not them "locking it down" it's that they're building custom hardware that you can only access by renting cloud computing (EC2) or buying a complete machine (Apple).
That pretty much sealed the deal for any serious laptop makers and now we've got Microsoft embracing "alternate" instruction sets, Amazon embracing non-Intel data center architectures, and Apple out competing with a bespoke CPU in a bespoke laptop form factor.
<opinion!> Intel is toast. (if you were still wondering) Which truly sucks because you really really want and need a chip fab business that can compete on the global scale. Intel needs to be that business for the US (Sorry Global Foundries you had your chance)
RISC-V is the new 8080A, FPGAs are the new SoC. Look for a huge number of computers available in all price points based on RISC-V sitting inside FPGA fabrics. This is going to be driven by open source tools and a set of open source HDL cores for all of the "essential" peripherals.
The consumer device kingmakers will be graphics architecture suppliers. The biggest differentiator for the next few years will be "can your graphics card do this?!" </opinion!>
Not really. All this shuffling to "custom hardware" is due to the fact that Moore's Law broke a couple generations back.
Custom hardware makes no sense if you can just wait 18 months and the performance of a generic chip will double.
Once you can't just "wait for performance increases" then building your own silicon starts to make sense.
Crystal ball tells me that someone will likely be Microsoft. If Microsoft has high performance Surface chips, there is little in the way of them licensing it to OEM partners. Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, etc... won't be able to compete with MS, due to the vertical integration between the Windows operating system and Microsoft silicon.
(Incidentally, this is why I see efforts to remove backwards-compatibility from the PC as a hostile takeover and closing of the ecosystem.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHQL_Testing
The only way you get a standard like that is if a really big player, in this case Microsoft, steps in and sets the rules and does the work. It's not like backwards compatibility had enough inertia to do this without having someone set the standard.
Just look how hard it is to migrate a significant application from Oracle to SQL Server or Postgres. It's easy for a trivial application, but there are lots of things to trip you up if you're migrating some big hairy complicated application.
I'm not sure how much we will see divergence, or how much it matters to most developers. If the tools can compile/target a given CPU and operate, devs largely won't care. Some will, most won't.
I don't think that MS and Amazon will stray too far from generally supported 64-bit arm instructions as a base. Maybe hardware optimizations that will work better in some workloads, but the baseline will likely work. This is only because of the diverse languages and tools that they need to support.
I think it's more about shoring up options, reducing costs and optimizing data center layouts. When targeting cloud, many apps are already scaling horizontally. So you don't need to perform like an M1 for general use as long as you can scale horizontally enough at a competitive price point, you can get a very long way without a ton of custom extension.
Microsoft have considered their arm desktops as less serious than the others? If this new arm chip is meant to be an intel challenger that lower status must end. Universal binaries solve that too.
Deleted Comment
Imagine this: stick an M1-like CPU and GPU combo on a PCIe card. Run the games entirely on the card, using the host system as merely a way to provide data to the card. In one shot, you murder the AMD and Intel processor market - everyone can just buy the cheapest model and still play games, saving their money for the unified GPU/CPU board. It also paves the way for eGPU products for laptops becoming more mainstream, and could work towards a play for the Shield to become a console competitor (if cannibalizing their existing console business is worth it to them).
Also NVIDIA quit the mobile market a while ago. They are focused on Autonomous driving and embedded market. The only consumer product on the market with NVIDIA SoC is Nintendo Switch (which sells millions)
But what if Microsoft takes the lessons learned from making their server chips, and uses that to develop their own chips for the Surface. Again, bad for Intel, but hardly a huge deal.
But what if Microsoft then takes these Surface chips, and licenses them to Windows manufacturers to create the next generation of PCs... PCs that can compete with the M1 in terms of performance and efficiency.
For Microsoft, the benefits would be immense. Microsoft obviously knows Windows better than anyone, and would be able to tailor both the operating system and their CPUs to work far more efficiently than Wintel. This also increases Microsoft’s vertical integration and control over the Windows operating system, which they’d no doubt view as positive. Microsoft becomes vendor of the Windows operating system and the CPUs it runs on. Intel systems would be at a permanent competitive disadvantage, as they don’t have the tight level of integration of Windows and MS-designed chips.
The off the shelf ARM core designs are likely good enough for Microsoft to create an offering that’s competitive with Intel, if they implement some tweaks to make it integrate and perform better with Windows (as Apple has done with M1 and macOS)
This might sound bonkers right now, but there’s definitely a version of the future where we’re buying a Dell XPS powered by Windows 10 and “Microsoft Silicon”
This is all happening because ARM licenses it’s core design and ISA to anyone. It’s becoming relatively easy for major internet companies to design and implement their own bespoke CPU designs, optimized for their unique workloads. This means better performance, and lower energy costs, which is critical for these massive datacentres. The optimization benefits offered by that degree of vertical integration is something Intel may not be able to compete with.
For Intel this is obviously terrible news. Severs are their second biggest cash cow, and MS might end up being merely among the first of many internet companies to pursue their own CPU designs. This could foretell a rapid shift away from Intel and x86 in the server space.
This has implications for their PC chip business too. More money invested into ARM processors, means more R&D for ARM-based designs, which means better ARM chips in PC and mobile. This makes Intel less competitive in the PC space.
However, it would be a terrible move for interoperability. OEMs would be inclined to purchase Microsoft's chips (MS's vertical integration would mean that their chips would outperform the competition when running Windows), and Microsoft could in turn restrict their chips to the Windows operating system.
How much performance do you get by taking, say, code originally written for a 10-year-old compiler whose default target was vanilla i486, and build wuuth a recently built compiler? I'd expect wins from targeting a more modern instruction set, plus 10 years of general "we've learned more about optimization".
Microsoft can't do that without an architecture change, and if they do that, they're basically abandoning their primary push to consumers: your established software and workflow investments are no longer safe on Windows.
Also, the main motivation is the cost. Any other vendor would want the highest profit out of their design.
In my opinion, the majority of people have too much faith in their ability to predict the future.
I was terrible at predicting the real world performance of the Apple Silicon M1. It is, in fact, much better than I expected. On the other hand, Microsoft has thus far only had slightly modified AMD chips in their Surface Laptop, and poor performing ARM-designed Qualcomm chips in their Surface Pro X. Maybe I'll be bad at predicting the future, but I do not expect excellent performance out of Microsoft's Surface chips in the next 365 days. Probably longer.
In the meantime, more Windows computers will be sold than MacOS, and they will have mostly Intel chips, but an increasingly large number of AMD chips.
AMD has survived with less diverse revenue streams and much worse product portfolios. I'm optimistic for how they'll do over the next several years.
I expected what came out in the end. Apple would never put up the amount of money and the promise to ditch Intel if they were not absolutely certain that they could actually beat Intel performance-wise and have a working Rosetta to keep "old" software running.
The writing was on the wall for a long time, iPhone and iPad processor power has been taking decent shots at moderately powerful PC hardware for years now - the key thing why Apple didn't do it two years ago was software support and developer tooling, they wanted to avoid cloning the Windows RT fiasco which fizzled out because no one had working software and there was no translation layer.
Most of their hardware products (not all... but most) end up being good, but not earth-shatteringly so, and either keep kind of moving on without taking any crowns (like Xbox), or slowly wither and die (Zune, Windows Phone).
Surface seems to be a good Halo product (not the game, ha!) so far, but I see very few Surfaces in the wild compared to any other laptop/tablet/desktops (mostly HP, some Dell, etc.).
It does put healthy pressure on them, but I think AMD is fine for the near future, they're also working on ARM chips as well.
Plus, it's very likely that unlike Apple, Microsoft will not be able to find a way to economically design their own CPU cores. They'll just be premade Cortex X1 or whatever licensed ARM core, but Apple will remain ahead with Firestorm/Icestorm and whatever comes after. Kind of like Qualcomm right now.
The chips don't have to be better than Apple, they just have to be better than Intel (and AMD).
The benchmarks of the Snapdragon 888, which utilizes the Cortex-X1 core design, look decent. I mean, they're not as good as the A14 and M1 with the Firestorm/Icestorm cores, but they're decent. Decent enough that Microsoft could likely build upon the X1 core and tweak those designs to have competitive performance to Intel.
Can read about another chip they are making here: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/microsoft-pluton-new-chip-desi...
The CPU on the Xbox 360 was co-designed with IBM, working to integrate their PowerPC-based PPE cores with an AMD GPU.
As an outsider looking in, Microsoft definitely dabbles its toes into designing chips but they've always done it with a partner already big in the space of chip design. Even with that Pluton "chip", its more about creating a standard secure enclave system between existing CPU manufacturers based on some Microsoft specifications rather than an entire chip design ready to get sent to a fab.
Microsoft is just as rich as Apple. They can do whatever they want.
I highly doubt they would get into the trouble of designing their own chips only to settle for something mediocre.
If you can fit 500-1000 mediocre arm cores in the same space as 128 x86 cores at half the power/heat, it absolutely makes sense for something like Azure. They don't have to beat Intel/AMD on a core for core basis as long as they can compete on compute/space/power requirements horizontally.
It's not the best option for some loads, but is a good enough option for enough loads that the diversification can really work out. There's plenty of software/systems/services that don't need x86 per core performance and a single ARM core is enough per node.
I just wrote about that [2] few hours ago before this news pops up. Even Microsoft is abandoning the WinTel Alliance. I know there are still long way to go before the dismissal of x86 / Intel. On one hand they deserved it, for pathetic management in a hyper competitive market. On the other hand I kind of feel sorry for them. Seeing the Giant falling.
[1] https://www.servethehome.com/impact-of-marvell-thunderx3-gen...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25471116
Me too. Except they really did deserve it but not because they could not compete, but because instead of trying to help board manufacturers making better computers they sued them.
Nvidia made an awesome chipset with a mini cpu made to handle basic instructions and used intel cpu for the high end computation. Intel sued them for not using their own Chipset.
The nvidia chip was a power saver in 2010. And it was the best of both worlds. Zotac put together their chipset and board into a mini itx pc. Fabless. Playing 1080p video.
That was the height of innovation and intel tried to keep a clamp on the market for fear of losing it.
And maybe that is the bottom line. They knew their product was dying. Their market was no longer going to grow. So they followed the 40% rule. And tried to milk the market as much as they could.
Source. https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mainboards/zotac-ionitx-t-s...
https://www.wargamer.com/articles/intel-sues-nvidia/
Or maybe there's something about full integration that makes a custom-designed chip just so much better than a more general purpose chip?
These major strategy shifts require enormous courage, support and trust at the executive level, because they represent cannibalizing an existing (real) part of the business for the promise of future profits in a business that does not yet exist.
Kodak is a textbook example. Execs refused to pivot to digital cameras and associated products, because this would compete with the enormously profitable (and internally powerful) film business.
For servers there's Ampere and Nuvia. For ARM PCs I think Qualcomm/Samsung/MediaTek/etc. could easily build a pretty good SoC if there's obvious demand.
As a customer, I tried buying compute sticks in large quantities (i.e. 1000s) from a distributor but they would not extend pricing discounts until Intel approved them. In order to get approved, I had to take online training classes and quizes Intel offered. It was insane. No other company I dealt with required anything like that. I spent hours doing online training on their solutions and never was able to arrange a single discount. Finally said screw it and went with a different solution. Hands down the worst company I dealt with.
In fact, if you want to prevent anyone else from taking control over your market, you will have to design your own CPU/ecosystem.