Microsoft announces a brand-new Arm-powered desktop PC and Arm-native dev tools
At its Build developer conference Tuesday, Microsoft made a few announcements aimed at bolstering Windows on Arm. The first is Project Volterra, a Microsoft-branded mini-desktop computer powered by an unnamed Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC. More relevant for developers who already have Arm hardware, Volterra will be accompanied by a fully Arm-native suite of developer tools.
According to Microsoft's blog post, the company will be releasing ARM-native versions of Visual Studio 2022 and VSCode, Visual C++, Modern .NET 6, the classic .NET framework, Windows Terminal, and both the Windows Subsystem for Linux and Windows Subsystem for Android. Arm-native versions of these apps will allow developers to run them without the performance penalty associated with translating x86 code to run on Arm devices—especially helpful given that Arm Windows devices usually don't have much performance to spare.
[...] As for the Volterra hardware, what we know is that it's running a Qualcomm SoC with a built-in neural processing unit (NPU), "best-in-class AI computing capacity," and support for Qualcomm's Neural Processing SDK. Microsoft is pushing it as a solution for testing AI and machine-learning apps, although depending on the other specs it could also be a good general-purpose development box for Windows on Arm apps.
While Microsoft remains quiet on what chipset powers Project Volterra, WinFuture asserts that it is the Snapdragon 8cx Gen3, which contains four ARM Cortex-X1 cores running at 2.99 GHz and an additional four Cortex-A78 cores clocked at 2.4 GHz.
[...] Moreover, Microsoft claims that Project Volterra is stackable, theoretically allowing developers to combine two or more Snapdragon 8cx Gen3 chipsets together.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @01:47AM (1 child)
It still runs on windows, don't it?!
Windows is dying. Don't matter ARM or x86.
Don't take my words for it. Netcraft confirmed it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @02:34AM
Mod parent up to +5 "flamebait"
(Score: 1) by Ironrose on Friday May 27 2022, @03:18AM (4 children)
Windows on ARM? A kind of a Micro-raspberry? Will it outperform a Raspberry Pi 4?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @03:40AM (3 children)
Almost anything on the market can outperform a Raspberry Pi 4. Even other Cortex-A72 chips outperform Pi 4.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @04:05AM (2 children)
This is the beefed-up cell phone chip that is used in Chromebooks. Performance should be similar.
Newer cores than RK3588 perhaps even.
A Mac-mini competitor could be interesting if they open the bootloader and provide specs to port Linux.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday May 27 2022, @07:31AM (1 child)
One thing to note is that the Snapdragon 8cx Gen3 [soylentnews.org] is packing 4 Cortex-X cores. We haven't seen more than 2 in a smartphone. They aren't fundamentally that different from Cortex-A78, but it is clearly a desktop/laptop-oriented SoC.
Qualcomm acquired Nuvia and supposedly they will introduce Nuvia-developed designs that actually have a chance of taking on Apple Silicon and winning. But you'll have to wait until around 2024 [tomshardware.com] for anything to materialize.
Samsung is rumored [slashdot.org] to attempt its own custom silicon again to take on Apple, around 2025. They are currently partnering with AMD on graphics and you could expect that to continue.
Linux? Well, let's hope one of these companies takes it seriously.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @05:16PM
Don't forget Microsoft requires ARM system manufacturers to not permit disabling of "secure boot". If they also do not allow you to enroll your own keys, you will be forced to use the mainstream linux distribution official kernels and bootloaders that have been signed by Microsoft. Last I checked none of the BSDs were signed by MS either.
And, Qualcomm has a history. They have repeatedly said FU to upstreaming drivers or even providing source for their drivers. Qualcomm is just an alternate spelling for,
"binary blobs". I'm not sure how that will work for a distro + secure boot?
Asahi Linux is coming along well (and Freebsd has been using what the Asahi Linux reverse engineering team discovers to add support in Freebsd too). Apple hardware will likely end up better supported by Linux and *BSD than this WinArm junk.
https://asahilinux.org/about/ [asahilinux.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @03:27AM
If Microsoft were /real/ computer technology company would've done this properly 15-20 years ago. (Instead of using non-intel Windows has a wedge to destroy its competitors like with NT/Alpha and DEC.) Apple at least accepted diversity as an (technical) option by starting OSX-Mach ports to x86 back then.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Frosty Piss on Friday May 27 2022, @05:49AM
I’ll have to pick one up, it’ll look great next to my Zune.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @05:59AM
How easy is it going to be to wipe it and install Linux?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @06:03AM (2 children)
...they can legally physically prevent wiping and installation of another OS on the system if it's ARM based, so forget buying an ARM desktop or laptop made for Windows so you can run Linux or BSD on it. That's the whole reason they're pushing this IMO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @11:01AM (1 child)
no it's to join the "planned obsolescence" game.
the "drivers" ofc need to remain closed-source for this to happen and a new "OS feature" only works on newer harware ... thus claiming everybody bought the new arm and it was not cost effective to support the previous arm ... thus turning a 3 year old.device into a NSA /foreign threat actor spring board -or- landfill material.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @02:35PM
whynotboth.gif
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @03:30PM (1 child)
that is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @10:29PM
You misspelled 'me' ;-)