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posted by n1 on Tuesday October 28 2014, @08:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-choice-but-to-follow dept.

Bloomberg reports unnamed sources are saying Microsoft is working on a server software version that will run on 64-bit ARM processors.

The world’s largest software maker has a test version of Windows Server that’s already running on ARM-based servers, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public yet. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, hasn’t yet decided whether to make the software commercially available, one of the people said. Microsoft now only offers a server operating system for use on Intel’s X86 technology-based processors.

Power consumption is often a data center's single greatest cost and data centers running ARM processors will see significant savings.

Red Hat, with AMD, American Megatrends, AppliedMicro, ARM, Cavium, Dell, HP and Linaro, are taking the next step. Under Red Hat's leadership they've started a development project to bring 64-bit ARM to the data center. Before that, Red Hat helped create the ARM's Server Base System Architecture (SBSA), which is designed to help accelerate software development and enable support across multiple 64-bit ARM platforms.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @09:28AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @09:28AM (#110795)

    Apple had an x86 version of OSX long before they made the switch. Porting an OS to an up and coming architecture doesn't necessarily mean it'll be released, either. It could turn out to run lousy and they learn from it for the next generation OS, or it could just be an experiment waiting to be taken out back and shot. Either way, it's interesting to see MS at least trying to be nimble.

    • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday October 28 2014, @04:03PM

      by DECbot (832) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @04:03PM (#110886) Journal

      I do see this as interesting. Perhaps there are rumblings in the server room for ARM support? Not that we hear much about Google's and Facebook's servers, but it would not surprise me if many of them were low power ARM machines. Microsoft could just be working on this to ensure it isn't caught with it's pants down when the custom ARM server stack jumps to mainstream customers. Of course, I would believe it more if Intel started developing ARM chips for servers.

      --
      cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by dltaylor on Tuesday October 28 2014, @09:49AM

    by dltaylor (4693) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @09:49AM (#110797)

    Since Microsoft has long had a Master Control Program, it is now obvious why RedHat is building one into Linux. They're just working to make Linux work like Windows.

    The question is "Once Linux is a Windows clone, why does anyone need Linux?".

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @10:28AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @10:28AM (#110801)

    We get enough M$ spam on the other site. No need to fill the page with it even if it is in the queue. If there's nothing newsworthy in the queue, so be it. No need to force marketing on us. We'll look for stuff to post here, but leave out the M$ spam.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by WizardFusion on Tuesday October 28 2014, @11:16AM

      by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 28 2014, @11:16AM (#110810) Journal

      It might be spam to you, but I was interested in this story. It will be interesting to see how/if this pans out, and if it will move to just data-centre servers, or tablets too.
      Remember: one persons junk, is another persons treasure.

      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @11:38AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @11:38AM (#110814)

        so go subscribe to one of the thousands of MS news feeds out there, save this ONE MICROSOFT WAY shit for slashbeta.

        and if news feeds aren't your thing, try one of the hundreds or thousands of forums where people bitch about their Windows systems broken by ABCDEFG.

        • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday October 28 2014, @02:57PM

          by epitaxial (3165) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @02:57PM (#110868)

          I was not aware SN had a ban on stories pertaining to Microsoft.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday October 28 2014, @12:04PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @12:04PM (#110818) Journal

      Now Microsoft is a evil corporation but it's also important to know what they are up to. Don't worry, we will port all malware to ARM64 .. ;-)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @12:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @12:18PM (#110825)

      What is "M$"?

      Normally we write dollar amounts with a leading "$". So it would be "$M".

      And we normally use decimal notation, and not Roman numerals, for the amount. So we'd write it as "$1000" instead.

      If you stick to the conventions that everyone else uses, you will be better understood.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @05:11PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @05:11PM (#110902)

        M$ is a BASIC string variable. The trailing dollar sign marks it as string. You could, for example, write

        LET M$ = "Microsoft"

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @12:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 28 2014, @12:44PM (#110832)

      We get enough M$ spam on the other site.

      Who is this "we"? Some of us continue to support the Slashcott and choose to not visit (i.e. support) the other site any more.

      Further, the story also mentions several other hardware and software companies and I find it useful to know what [else] they are up to in addition to any linux support.

      Lastly, as Microsoft is the largest software company in the world, what they do does tend to have an effect on the rest of the software ecosystem and, thus, what other companies may choose to [not] pursue.

  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday October 28 2014, @07:15PM

    by tftp (806) on Tuesday October 28 2014, @07:15PM (#110949) Homepage

    Intel CPUs are expensive and hot, and their chipsets are also expensive and hot. It is difficult to build a usable Intel m/b for less than $200 in mass production, and probably impossible to do so for less than $100. Intel design belongs to Intel, which is a sole supplier. (I don't know what is AMD's position on that, and how they compare today.)

    At the same time there are many ARM boards that are sold for far less than $100. ARM licenses their CPU netlists to anyone who wants them, since that's their business model. Consequently, there are many ARM-based microcontrollers and microprocessors; some of them are very advanced. Windows has no access to all that hardware, even if it is built with lots of RAM and storage.

    I don't know what is the current situation, but a few years back dual Xeons were horribly expensive and very, very hot. Perhaps today MS wants to create a bunch of ARM blades and run the server on them. It could make sense, as servers specialize in running hundreds, if not thousands of processes and threads. Regardless, it is good for MS to try something new.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 28 2014, @08:21PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday October 28 2014, @08:21PM (#110969) Homepage
      Cost is indeed an issue, not just in combination with power consumption, but as part of power consumption. Watts mean cooling, and cooling means more $s. Intel's general purpose CPUs may be massively high on a scale measured purely by MIPS|FLOPS, but when measured by MIPS/$ or MIPS/Watt, they come out only averagely (similar to an ARM, say). If you go the whole hog and measure them in terms of MIPS/Watt/$, then they are truly abyssmal. DSPs and other non-general-purpose processors score orders of magnitude higher (but can only do well on very restricted sets of tasks). (Hence the existence of modern GPUs, they're just a modern extension of old DSP architectures, some of which were actually GPUs before the term "GPU" was ever coined.)

      Personally, I look forward to "The Mill" becoming a reality. It's possibly the only revolutionary CPU design in about 30 years. Its killer feature is that MIPS is high, and both Watts and $ are kept low. Everything has been made as simple for the CPU as possible, so that you don't need huge arrays of super-smart scheduling logic, and crossbars for shifting virtual data (e.g. hundreds of renamed registers) around. Everything's statically scheduled, and the data's always in a predictable location. Pretty much everything has been designed from the ground up, with no need for compatibility with any other architecture, and some of it is so off the wall it's bizarre - two instruction pointers, moving in opposite directions! It does borrow a fair bit from a very wide range of historical and academic designs, it's just that it combines them in ways never considered before. You'll see lots of DSP/VLIW similarities, and hints of stack machines, for example. If you've got 16 hours to spare, I highly recommend watching all their talks on youtube. If you've only got 12 hours to spare, you can easily watch them at 133% speed, as Ivan Godard, the guy giving the talks, speaks slowly, introduces things at a gentle pace, and has a deep voice so doesn't end up sounding like a smurf. All linked to from here: http://millcomputing.com/docs/
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves