
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 to Support Windows 10 - richardboegli
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330961
======
aamederen
Do processors support operating systems now? I thought the reverse was true.

~~~
Maarten88
The news is hidden near the end of the article. There is rumor that Microsoft
is working on some sort of x86 virtualization/emulation on ARM, for their
Continuum technology, and this news is that Qualcomm is building something in
their ARM chips to make that possible.

~~~
IMcD23
Not a rumor anymore. They just announced they are working on it in partnership
with Qualcomm and it will be available next year.

------
gumby
Don't forget that the ARM's raw performance is much less than that of Intel.
Intel (and Nvidia) have chosen a price-performance-point regime that makes
sense right now on the desktop (what's left of it...quite a bit!) and server.
They've completely ceded mobile to ARM/Imagination.

The two worlds occupy different regions of the price/performance/power cube.

~~~
willtim
To be honest, likely Arm is fast enough for most people. My experience of
Intel's mobile hardware is that it is noisy, hot and overpriced. I only browse
the web and edit text on my laptop, yet I have to suffer fan noise and heat
whenever various background processes decide they need lots of CPU (e.g.
windows update). I never used to consider alternatives because Intel had great
Linux support, this isn't true anymore with regard to their mobile parts.

~~~
gambiting
That's just extremely poor engineering of 90% of windows laptop makers. Macs
use intel CPUs and they are virtually inaudible unless you are playing games
or transcoding videos.

~~~
vetinari
Try scrolling a facebook page on a MBP :) The fans are pretty at max.

~~~
toyg
Wat? You must have one of those entry-level models with 4gb of ram. My 2012
mbpr never starts fans unless the gpu is taxed.

~~~
vetinari
Early 2015, 16 GB RAM.

~~~
sliken
Friend has similar behavior on his older MBP. Turns out all the vents between
the keyboard and the display (directly adjacent to the hinge) were filled with
dust.

~~~
gambiting
I really suspect theirs are caked with dust, because Macs will sooner
downclock their CPUs massively rather than spin the fans up during normal use.

------
aymenim
I would be interested to know how x86 programs run on the Qualcomm SoC, is it
some sort of optimized emulation or x86 to ARM translation layer while
simulating the system calls directly like Linux subsystem for windows, either
way, it would be interesting to see how it will perform,

~~~
arthurfm
> it would be interesting to see how it will perform

The performance looks surprisingly good...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_GlGglbu1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_GlGglbu1U)

~~~
aymenim
that is fantastic, above all, I am amazed by the photoshop. great work
Microsoft i can't wait to try it.

------
ohstopitu
Microsoft released a video[0] of this working on an Snapdragon 820 yesterday.
I was extremely impressed with the fact that they were able to run a win32 app
on it without any modification.

The future of Intel / AMD is definitely going to be very interesting to say
the least.

[0] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_GlGglbu1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_GlGglbu1U)

------
fowl2
It would be funny if MS beat Apple to ARM laptops

~~~
dragonbonheur
Apple already had the eMate 300.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300)

And Acorn (the company that invented ARM chips - Acorn Risc Machine) had the
Acorn A4
[http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/22807/Acorn-A4-Laptop...](http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/22807/Acorn-A4-Laptop/)
Edit: Microsoft was also already there with their Windows CE devices.

And Psion and Vtech ([http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/30249/Vtech-I-T-
Lapto...](http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/30249/Vtech-I-T-Laptop/))
also used ARM Chips in laptop form factor devices

So it's not really about someone beating someone else to market, just the
evolution of the market itself.

~~~
fattire
And isn't the new touchbar thing on the macbook pros also running on ARM?

[http://gadgets.ndtv.com/laptops/news/macbook-
pro-2016s-touch...](http://gadgets.ndtv.com/laptops/news/macbook-
pro-2016s-touch-bar-said-to-be-controlled-by-a-secondary-arm-
processor-1586858)

And speaking of windows 10 on arm... what's the deal with this Windows 10 IoT
Core thing? from February and how does it relate to the qcom socs?

[https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/02/29/windows-10...](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/02/29/windows-10-iot-
core-support-for-raspberry-pi-3/)

------
krylon
It will be interesting to see if those ARM-based "PCs" will be supported by
other operating systems (think: Debian, OpenBSD), too.

Also, I am curious what types of devices we can expect. Something along the
lines of a Raspberry Pi, but with more RAM and an SSD would be very nice!

------
brokenmachine
I know what OS I _won 't_ be running on my phone...

~~~
richardboegli
Having Full Microsoft Office suite running on phone is a game changer.

Word, Excel, Outlook, Access etc...

The cut down versions which are currently on Android and iOS doesn't cover all
the use cases like the full versions do.

Also having Visual Studio on phone would be interesting :)

~~~
mtgx
Most of the "ground-breaking" features of the new Windows machines have turned
out to be gimmicks at best, and I doubt this time is going to be any
different.

Take "hybrid" tablets that can turn their screen around and whatnot. Who
actually uses them like that in any significant amount of time? Nobody, that's
who. Most people end up using them in the laptop form factor the vast majority
of the time.

As for running the desktop versions of Office or Visual Studio on a 5"
screen....well you can imagine all the UX problems with that.

If there's anything ground-breaking here at all (and assuming there isn't a
huge performance overhead - should be 10% at most, under 3% ideally), it's the
fact that now ARM chip makers will be getting access to the "real" (not
counting Chromebooks, where Google never tried to encourage the use of ARM
anyway, _despite the fact_ that it's architecture-agnostic, and thus doesn't
even need to emulate x86 apps like Windows does) PC/notebook market. That,
along with AMD's Zen, should make the PC chip market much more competitive in
the next 2-3 years.

 _That 's_ what should really excite everyone, not some gimmicks that will
never be used despite all the hype they may be getting.

~~~
pjmlp
Those hybrid tablets have kicked out the Android ones on display in most
consumer shops here in Germany, so someone is buying them.

~~~
vetinari
The android ones proved, that no one (in Spolsky meaning of "no one") gets
such a device and uses it in both modes.

I had one of them, Asus Transformer, and used it as a tablet only, despite
having a keyboard which served as an additional battery. It was both, worse
laptop than real laptop and worse tablet than real tablet. So why purchase it
at all, when you are going to use it in single mode? There are better choices
on the market.

~~~
pjc50
I too have one and used it with keyboard _and_ touchscreen. And occasionally
in detached mode. The "detach at hinge" feature is less critical than being
both a "tablet" (usable with touchscreen only) but with a keyboard for
sustained text entry. And a hinge so you don't have to prop it up.

------
pcr0
The link is broken

~~~
richardboegli
eetimes is having issues. HN effect? Is that a thing? Like Slashdot effect?

See the Google Cache here:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VM98Uf7...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VM98Uf75nUYJ:www.eetimes.com/document.asp%3Fdoc_id%3D1330961+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
smcl
It's called the HN "Hug of Death" iirc

