Microsoft To Take On Apple Silicon With Custom ARM Chips - Slashdot

Posted by BeauHD

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      Remember when trolls were talented?

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• What were the previous versions optimized for... wood?

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  • • Re: Wood is the future

      "The server's down! It has termites!"

• Seems equally likely it is meant for Azure.

  For the consumer market, processors are hardly the most pressing need for competitiveness. They need mobile phones, finance, home automation etc etc. Ecosystem or perish.

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    because that doesn't make for a high volume clickbait article.

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    I think they assume it's consumer because that is Microsoft's current plan. They've released multiple ARM based consumer PCs, and 3rd party SOCs cannot stand up to Apple. They very much are trying to compete. That doesn't, however, mean they don't recognize it's use in other markets down the line.

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      Apple uses ridiculously large amounts of silicon, while buying out the most advanced nodes from TSMC for 2 years... it's not really an ISA issue, it's a profit margin issue. If you can't sell high margin products at Apple volumes, you just can't afford to design silicon the way they do.

      They should just pay AMD for a version of Phoenix with a wider memory bus and LPDDR on interposer, that would do more to close the gap than ARM.

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        Apple have run away with the performance envelope in certain types of processing, especially with the AI and Metal extension on their silicon, and with the added benefit of the secure element. It isn't perfect, of course, but sure makes x86 procs look shitty by comparison. Apple also has the advantage of making profit on all the other components for 100% of their install base. MS does not. Apple's model would be attractive for Microsoft to ape, if not for the profits, for the competitiveness. MS will not be

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          If MS is attempting to move everyone to the cloud, does it matter that they are designing their own chips?

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    Microsoft already has an arm64 server offering in Azure [microsoft.com] using Ampere Altra CPUs. I don't think their market share is enough at this stage to justify developing their own silicon.

    This article is based on job descriptions for System on Chip (SoC) development. That terminology generally referrers to the chips used in portable devices.

• I thought they had a deal with Intel that they wouldnâ(TM)t do this sort of thing. Maybe it expired?

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    Intel is undertaking the difficult journey of turning itself into a fab. Just as Apple doesn't manufacture their own silicon, neither does or will Microsoft. Intel should see this as an opportunity.

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      well, yes true, neither MS or Apple will own the fab, but they will have a direct hand in the design which I thought was a no-no for MS (can't remember if it was due to a deal with Intel or anti trust?)

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        Probably contracts with OEMs. But designing and rolling out silicon is a BIG undertaking, which will take years of development on the silicon side, and years of OS revamping. Apple are the experts in this area and it takes them years to do transitions like this (POWER >> Intel >> Apple Silicon). Each >> was a few years, with transition assistance for developers and emulation layers in between. Microsoft is just planning for the day those contracts sunset.

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    No way? Well, that is a pretty low bar and MS has some deep pockets.

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      You cant just throw money at the problem. You need talent, and an ecosystem that isnt stuck in the past. One you can brow-beat your clients in upgrading away from and force developers to move with you. Apple has that. Microsoft does not.
• The custom silicon race has gone far beyond any possible profit margin scale at this point.
  
  Back when Intel got lazy over having a monopoly the field was wide open. Arm came in with mobile stuff, AMD took the opportunity for server chips. Etc.
  
  But now we have Apple, Qualcomm, ARM, AMD, Intel, Tenstorrent, Microsoft, some other ARM ISA server producer I can't even remember the name of, and ought else. This amount of competition means margins will be squeezed down until producing your own custom chip is f

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    > The custom silicon race has gone far beyond any possible profit margin scale at this point.

    Well, that depends.

    For companies making commodity components, or trying to sell devices made from commodity components, then yes, trying to make a profit from them is very hard. And in general, investing in R+D to make incremental improvements is not likely to see a good return on that money.

    But if you are a vertically integrated company, and can design upcoming hardware around new hardware, and can sell those de

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      Pretty much what I was going to say, until I got sidetracked with actual work. They want/need something to directly compete with Apple, and nobody can. Qualcomm is well positioned at the top end for mobile devices, but their SOCs for PC are underwhelming.

  • Re: So dumb

    Apple was an investor in ARM when the âoeAâ still stood for Acorn, but then sold their investment.

    The initial ARM chip was so efficient that even the creators were surprised. They were some smart people. A good video on the history:

    https://youtu.be/nIwdhPOVOUk [youtu.be]

• MS has amazing record of supporting non-x86 hardware. Look at MIPS, PowerPC, Itanium, Dec-alpha and so on.

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• The Microsoft SQ2 (and SQ1) processors in the Surface Pro X were developed in partnership with Qualcomm.

  Is this a revolution or an evolution?

• The amount of time it takes before your current hardware no longer supports the latest version of Windows halves every 18 months.

• > Windows 12, which has a special version optimized for silicon

  The normal version isn't optimized? I wouldn't be surprised...