News Microsoft Is Designing New Processor for Windows 12: Report

[Admin]

Microsoft is designing an Arm processor to do for Windows what Apple Silicon did for Macs, says a new report. However, we think it may just be customizing a Qualcomm chip again.

Microsoft Is Designing New Processor for Windows 12: Report : Read more

 

[ezst036]

Microsoft better be careful. They have aped Apple for years, but they simply do not have the ability that Apple has to create a cult-like following. Even now, Windows has been in a decline for over a decade. If Microsoft wishes to have Apple's former 5% of the market, they might find that that's exactly what they end up with.

If Windows loses x86, along with it goes one of their prime "edge" reasons for existing, Legacy. Legacy applications go a long way toward maintaining what is left of Windows' dominance.

Currently, Windows is less than 70% as it stands. It isn't going to go higher. In the switch to ARM Microsoft is the big loser. Apple in particular, but Linux as well are the winners. Look at the purple bar representing MacOS growth. The trend cannot be denied.

 

[USAFRet]

Currently, Windows is less than 70% as it stands. It isn't going to go higher. In the switch to ARM Microsoft is the big loser. Apple in particular, but Linux as well are the winners. Look at the purple bar representing MacOS growth. The trend cannot be denied.

This isn;t a 100% ARM-only thing.

Looks to just be aimed at future Surface devices, that they don't sell many of anyway.

 

[Amdlova]

Microsoft will make a new cpu low power high efficient. Software team make windows 12 with high bloatware and other shinigamis make the thing slow like a atom cpu. One year after abandon the project...

 

[JamesJones44]

Legacy. Legacy applications go a long way toward maintaining what is left of Windows' dominance.

Those legacy apps get fewer and fewer each day. At this point, if a company hasn't switched to a modern runtime or compiler that supports both ARM and x86 isas then never will and those using that legacy software will likely be looking for a replacement.

We have many customers wanting to run on AWS Gravitons and other ARM based hardware, those requests are growing by the day. About 4 year ago we transitioned all of our software to be x86 and ARM compatible. The transition wasn't that bad and it has gotten easier to do than when we did it.

 

[bit_user]

Even now, Windows has been in a decline for over a decade.

I don't doubt that, but I do doubt the accuracy of that StatCounter site that doesn't list its data sources.

If Windows loses x86, along with it goes one of their prime "edge" reasons for existing, Legacy. Legacy applications go a long way toward maintaining what is left of Windows' dominance.

My employer uses Windows and we don't run any legacy apps. They could replace my x86 laptop with an ARM-based one, tomorrow, and I doubt I'd even notice.

As for most of those who do still run (non-gaming) legacy apps, Win 11 finally has x86-64 emulation on ARM. Sure, you take a speed hit, but then again such apps are probably 5+ years old and certainly run faster on modern ARM CPUs than they ran natively on the x86 CPUs that existed when they were released.

Currently, Windows is less than 70% as it stands. It isn't going to go higher.

70% is a marketshare many companies would kill for. And MS is financially doing very well off it. If all they do is stem the defection to Apple, then that would be enough.

Really, what else do you expect MS to do? Just sit back and watch its marketshare drain away? Of course they're going to do something about it!

In the switch to ARM Microsoft is the big loser.

Windows has been multi-ISA since the very inception of Windows NT, 30 years ago. That's worked fine for them. No reason they can't continue to support both x86 and ARM, as they've done for probably the better part of the past decade!

 

[bit_user]

The killer question is what is MS actually doing? As the article implies, it sounds like this effort is more than just continuing their partnership with Qualcomm. Could MS be working on its own Plan B, in case the litigation between ARM and Qualcomm goes badly or further drags out the launch of Nuvia-based SoCs?

The one thing we can say for sure is that MS isn't designing its own CPU cores. Qualcomm remains its only viable avenue to release anything with a hope of competing with Apple. However, they could do alright by continuing with ARM's own cores.