
Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance - rayuela
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/microsoft-pledges-to-use-arm-server-chips-threatening-intel-s-dominance
======
imglorp
This could well be a negotiating strategy to rejigger the relationship with
Intel. Dell did exactly the same thing a number of times for similar reasons.

So all you do is: put out some press releases, ramp up some hires, put out
some glossy product roadmaps. Intel starts to get separation anxiety and
flinches: well, maybe they can afford to come closer to AMD prices for another
year. They kiss up and you back out of your false posturing. Rinse and repeat
every few years.

~~~
Twirrim
Dell did this for ages with AMD chips. Same time every year you'd see an
article go across all the magazines about Dell planning to introduce AMD chips
to their servers, and just as quickly vanish once Dell had finished
negotiating with Intel.

~~~
ams6110
They did more than plan, I have a rack full of older Dell servers with AMD
CPUs.

~~~
Twirrim
When I say "did this for ages", I'm reaching back to the turn of the
millennium. It started happening about as soon as AMD brought their first
competitive chip to the market.

Dell did eventually start shipping servers with AMD processors in them, but it
was long after they first started saying "We may start selling AMD based
servers."

------
ChuckMcM
I love the fact that this can even be a threat. I'm biased, as an old Sun guy
and thinking the x86 architecture was a bit too adhoc[1] and way too
proprietary for really clever innovation. I had pretty much given up anyone
challenging them in the server space assuming that 100 years from now kids
would marvel that their brain implant could be switched into 'real mode' to
run something called 'dos' :-).

This is something that I give full credit to Linus and the other developers
that have made Linux into a credible server operating system. Without that
software base, ARM would never have been able to get where it has.

[1] I get it that most people never see the 'insides' of their systems but its
always been something I cared about.

------
foobiekr
Has it been long enough for people to forget NT on Alpha, MIPS and x86 (and
i860, though not released)? And to forget both PReP
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_Reference_Platform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_Reference_Platform))
and CHRP
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Plat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platform))
which were going to break the Intel stranglehold once and for all?

~~~
bluedino
Imagine having a time machine, going back to Microsoft in the 90's and telling
them to _forget SGI, IBM, and HP, port NT to ARM..._

~~~
cmrdporcupine
They'd laugh at you since at that time ARM was something that ran in either
small-format low power low-clock devices (like a Newton) or in fringe machines
like the Acorn Archimedes.

------
willvarfar
> We wouldn't even bring something to a conference if we didn't think this was
> a committed project and something that's part of our road map."

As anyone who rode the rollercoaster of abandonment in the ActiveX years
recalls, their previous MO was all about things that became uncommitted after
being in their road map :(

I really hope there's some kind of future for non-Intel players.

~~~
justin66
ActiveX deserved abandonment, but anyone who remembers those years probably
also remembers that Microsoft is capable of supporting NT on many different
architectures.

~~~
rleigh
Potentially capable; their support for non-x86 has always fallen short.

If you look at e.g. Linux or BSD distributions, the entire world is rebuilt
for every architecture. Running Linux on powerpc, arm, amd64, I get the exact
same experience across the board as x86 bar platform-specific bits like
openfirmware/efi tools. Microsoft has never done this. The vast majority of
their stuff remains x86 only, making arm and even x64 second class citizens,
with x64 only being viable as a result of the x86 compatibility. Until
Microsoft start building and providing every binary as a native build, and
providing the tooling for others to do the same, they will remain wedded to
x86, and I'll be unable to take their support for other platforms seriously.

If a bunch of volunteers can manage to provide over 20000 software packages
for over 10 architectures, totalling over 500000 binary packages, it's
entirely possible for Microsoft to support three. When I used to maintain the
Debian build tools, it took 18 hours to rebuild around all 18000 packages;
compilers, kernel, tools, applications, everything. It would be much faster on
a current system. It's all possible from a technical point of view.

~~~
andreiw
Not true. When multiarch mattered (NT 3 and 4), Microsoft was the only vendor
that delivered the exact same OS, device support and development environment
across x86, Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC, and pushed the industry towards
standardization. Microsoft has always taken arch and platform independence
seriously, and this was evident even in 2010 when I worked on NT. You could
rebuild the whole system for any supported arch (x86, x64, ia64 when that
mattered), now arm and arm64

It's funny, but Microsoft was spot on correct to continue supporting 32-bit
x86 on par with x64. Now they can just support BTing 32 x86 on ARM64 instead
of being forced to support 64-on-64, which would simply involve more overhead.

~~~
milcron
BTing?

~~~
kijiki
Binary Translating.

Basically a JIT that recompiles (for example) 32bit x86 instructions to ARM64,
so that you can run old apps on new CPUs.

DEC had FX!32 to run x86 Windows NT programs on Alpha Windows NT.

Apple licensed Transitive's QuickTransit to run PPC OSX apps on x86 Macs,
though in typical Apple style they renamed it "Rosetta".

~~~
trapperkeeper79
Is this the same as code morphing mentioned here?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver)

Article seems to say NVidia couldn't get a license from Intel.

------
gigatexal
This is awesome: with a renewed AMD and now ARM gaining another big proponent
(Apple being the first imo) there might finally be some real competition to
Intel's place at the top.

~~~
hollerith
Samsung and Qualcomm aren't big proponents of ARM?

~~~
ndesaulniers
They're quite far behind Apple when it comes to perf. Aren't Apple's ARM chips
in their iPad pro competitive with lower end modern x86_64 chips?

~~~
jjtheblunt
Is that not also true for the Snapdragon chips? (835 for example)

~~~
gcp
No, not really. Apple's advantage is quite staggering.

~~~
andreiw
And yet the Snapdragon has nothing to do with any shipped or to be shipped ARM
server parts...

------
zbjornson
Competition is great, but this also seems like a rather big setback to the
goal of having multi-cloud applications, in instances where the app can only
run on x86-64.

~~~
rb808
There are fewer binary apps these days though. Java/Scala, C#/F#, JS, Python,
Erlang should all be fine.

~~~
MikeKusold
If you need a binary, Go can be cross-compiled for ARM as well.

~~~
danellis
Pretty much any noteworthy language can be, though.

------
cjhanks
I am far from an expert on this... but. For most software, can ARM
realistically replace Intel? If we ignore the obvious advantages of the
intrinsic instructions found in most Intel chips...

Intel has a really solid and reliable clock speed with a relatively small
number of steady states (low power, turbo, default). In my limited experience,
ARM chips seem to have variable clock speeds depending on both the type
(floating point/integer) and magnitude (number of cycles/sec) load. Is this
only apparent in the IoT space? Does it disappear in ARM chips designed for
servers? Am I delusional about this?

It is really difficult to understand just how sensitive any given application
is to the monotonic clock. Can most applications really just be ported?

~~~
james_a_craig
To cut a long story short: Yes, most applications can just be ported.

The number of applications that rely on the actual clock rate being steady is
extremely close to zero. Bear in mind nearly everything runs fine on laptop
machines, which generally have a much wider range of clock states, and have no
problems.

Similarly, each core in modern machines is likely to be running at a different
speed, and again, no problems.

Finally, the clock rates used are a matter of OS policy; if you tell your OS
to keep the CPU at a particular speed, it'll do it, regardless of whether it's
an x86 or an ARM CPU.

~~~
nickpeterson
I'm struck by how hard it would be to track down a bug that depends on the
consistency of the clockrate...

~~~
koffiezet
Bugs like the ones you describe come down to timing.

But it's not like "the old days" where for a specific target, there was only 1
chip/clockspeed so devs simply relied on it for timing since an RTC was or not
available, or too slow to access.

These days, it would be very hard to actually write code that relies on a
specific clock-rate and work reliably. It's a lot easier and reliable to use
the clock for time-sensitive stuff.

------
AlphaSite
Im very curious how this will work for AMD with their K12 chip. They will have
high performance x86_64 and AARCH64 chips.

~~~
deagle50
Last I read K12 was cancelled.

~~~
keth
Maybe you mean Skybridge? The last I read K12 was only delayed until 2017/2018
(but Skybridge was cancelled).

------
mrmondo
Other than some of the weird licensing I've heard (by know very little) about,
I love so much about ARM / RISC based systems but the one thing I find myself
needing is higher single core clock speeds, not just on ARM but on x86 as
well. Considering how popular and accessible interpreted languages such as
Python are these days and yet how hard it is to write multithread code easily
I often find processes bottlenecked by a single core, I'd love a high clock
speed (3.5ghz+) dual (or more) CPU ARM setup with at least 24 physical cores
and a sensible amount of L1/2 cache, but as far as I'm aware it's not really
something that's readily available. Something like that would hum with modern
Python / Ruby apps or even an ARM build of PostgreSQL and a modern (4.10+)
kernel with NVMe storage (if that exists / makes sense for ARM) running either
CentOS 7 + some trusted third party mirrors such as elrepo/epel or Fedora
Server which I have not actually tried in a production environment so I can't
comment on its updates stability but have found it the most reliable desktop
desktop distro (excluding macOS).

------
redtuesday
amd naples will also be used: [http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/amd-
collaborates-wi...](http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/amd-collaborates-
with-microsoft-to-advance-open-source-cloud-hardware-2201579.htm)

------
ptrptr
Question - is this a sign of maturity of ARM architecture? Can we really
expect desktop OS to move to ARM? Could Apple start transitioning Apple AX
into their laptops?

~~~
toyg
Servers and desktops have very different requirements, just ask the linux
guys. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't see that happening for
another 5 years at least. Apple in particular is already getting a lot of flak
for underpowering laptops, switching to Arm now would basically kill the
entirety of their remaining high-end offering on desktop.

~~~
freehunter
On the other hand, their A10 chip is roughly on par with the performance of
the Intel chip they include in the 12" MacBook. They're not going to replace
an i7 with an A10, but maybe replace the M3 or M5 with an A10, replace the i5
with an A11, and shoot for the i7 with an A12 or A13. Why else would they dump
so much money into making the fastest ARM chip on the market? The iPhone
doesn't need that much power, but they keep pumping it up anyway.

We all know OSX will run on ARM, they just use a different WM and call it iOS.

~~~
wcfields
I've been speculating that they'll do a A11+x86 combo; possibly using a very
underpowered, bargain basement x86 paired to an ARM for native binary
compatibility during the transition.

------
brutus1213
Dumb question. Are there commodity ARM SOCs with built-in PCIe controller
logic? Or is the idea that you have a separate controller chip? Is PCIe used
in ARM systems or do they use a different bus - axi??? Sorry for the dumb
questions. Hardware hobbyist here :)

~~~
protomok
Yes, many ARM based SOCs include PCIE IP...SOCs from Freescale, TI, Nvidia,
etc. typically supporting PCIE RC and EP.

Lots of boards with ARM based SOCs are using PCIE WiFi/BT combo chips which
traditionally used SDIO. PCIE also being used for storage.

------
deepnotderp
They're not replacing Intel chips from the looks of it though, right?

~~~
Analemma_
No, they're going to use it in Azure where it makes cost sense, and future
versions of Windows and Windows Server will run on ARM with emulation for x86
if you need it, but x86 support is definitely not going away.

~~~
frandroid
> x86 support is definitely not going away.

To say the least. :)

------
mtgx
Payback time?

[https://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-
off...](https://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-offers-two-
customers-skylake-xeon-cpus/)

Okay, obviously this partnership started years back, but it's nice to see that
not everyone is willing to _encourage_ Intel's monopoly, as Google often does
(in Chromebooks, too, even though Intel's chips are virtually unnecessary
there).

Although, to be fair, the "Wintel" name didn't come out of nowhere. Microsoft
obviously played its part in growing Intel's monopoly for a long time, too.

~~~
rbanffy
Microsoft tried as much as it could to avoid being locked into Intel. They
built Windows NT to be multi-platform and, at a given time, it ran on MIPS,
PPC, Alpha and a later version on Itanium.

Intel has been much more dependent on Microsoft's monopoly than the contrary.

~~~
throwaway2048
the amount of relevant windows software that can run on ARM is a rounding
error, and x86 emulation on ARM sounds completely unusable.

Microsoft is very dependant on x86.

~~~
heisenbit
Microsoft is _still_ very dependent on x86. But the two main platform with
potential to go forward: Server and Office are now both running on ARM.

~~~
rbanffy
The opposite is still very much the case. 64-bit desktop processors only
started selling when a version capable of running 32-bit Windows became
available (and not from Intel, who was putting all their eggs on Itanium) and
only took off after a 64-bit version of Windows for them was released.

Inertia is a powerful thing.

------
ngcc_hk
Strange many discussion is about game. The article is more about cloud
computing including AI, impact to HP etc

------
shmerl
I'm more interested in new AMD processors in the server. That's going to be
interesting.

------
frostirosti
AMD really needed the break. This is fantastic news. Don't all consoles also
use AMD chips?

~~~
mcintyre1994
ARM, not AMD. But yep, AMD is in PS4 and Xbox One. Nintendo Switch looks like
an Nvidia Tegra though (ARM).

~~~
trome
ARM isn't used for the main CPU for the PS4 or Xbox One, both run customized
APUs using x86-64, just like AMD's consumer APU offerings.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_technical_specif...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_technical_specifications#APU)

------
hatsunearu
Why though? ARM server chips haven't beat Intel just yet.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM
cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all
sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc.

So depending on your workload, a 96 core 1U is going to save you a lot of U's
and power. No idea how Windows Server and Azure services fall into this. Maybe
they want to dump specialized tasks onto ARM instead of churning through their
x86 infrastructure which takes longer and uses more power.

Data centers are power bound. Power is expensive and instantly turns into
heat, which requires yet more power to exhaust and cool. Anything that can
bring significant power savings will be taken seriously in data centers. If
ARM servers can deliver these power savings, then its a no-brainer to buy
them. The cost of porting Exchange, SQL server, Sharepoint, IIS, and Windows
Server to ARM is going to be a fraction of the power bill those DC's run. Now
that MS is actually paying the server bills, they're realizing that pegging
your product to just x86 isn't the wisest move.

~~~
gonzo
> Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM
> cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate
> all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc.

True, but that 96 core 1U server is going to bear a high price, and Intel CPUs
also have instructions to accelerate AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc.

~~~
gravypod
> 96 core 1U server is going to bear a high price

The server market only cares about price/watt and size. 1U is very small for
such a parallel system, no need to write your code for Phis or anything like
that, and low power in comparison to Intel.

Win, win, and win.

~~~
erik_seaberg
Does the market care much about size? I thought there were lots of datacenters
that reached their limits on power and cooling despite having floor space
available for more racks.

~~~
gravypod
It depends on place to place but sometimes space is limited. I know some
places need "off-site" backups that are within walking distance (not really
too off site). For companies in NYC or populated areas space is a factor.

Also if a machine was half as power consuming, twice as powerful, but you
could only fit one in your entire datacenter, I don't think many would go for
it.

Having many systems is a failure tolerance assurance. Being able to increse
your power efficiency, processing ability, AND capacity all by switching to a
single system that's priced competativly/cheaper to the market standard?
That's a wining combo.

------
robert_foss
For what?

Microsoft is not really a dominant force in the server space.

~~~
shliachtx
Azure is one of the big three in cloud computing - Google, Amazon, and
Microsoft

~~~
robert_foss
Sure, but it is a single cloud.

Will you ever be able to buy these products? And would you ever want to?
Windows Server 20XX on ARMv8 will forever remain a niche platform at best.

~~~
deelowe
> Sure, but it is a single cloud.

Not sure what that means. Arguably, the cloud computing business is what's
driving high performance computing at this point. Go look at the benchmarks
for Ryzen, for example. It's pretty clear who AMD is targeting with that
architecture (hint: games aren't in desperate need of better multi-core
performance).

> Will you ever be able to buy these products? And would you ever want to?
> Windows Server 20XX on ARMv8 will forever remain a niche platform at best.

Did you read the article? This is about MS supporting ARM in their cloud
offerings (and porting windows to do so). Whether or not consumers will
purchase these solutions seems irrelevant in this context.

