Intel seems to be bleeding out ...

[madires]

BTW, AMD has fun with SinkClose (CVE-2023-31315, https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/amd-sb-7014.html).

[brucehoult]

Interesting article from half a century ago...

[bd139]

Well I'm $1771 up on Intel so far 

[DiTBho]

In the meantime, Snapdragon laptops, equipped with Windows 11, have been launched on the market.

• Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen6, Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, Windows 11 ARM(1)

.
While it's not as mature as Apple Silicon, it already proves to have a better performance/battery life ratio than any x86-based laptop 


(1) Patches for Linux will be released for v6.12, will have to wait until October 

[coppice]

In the meantime, Snapdragon laptops, equipped with Windows 11, have been launched on the market.

• Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen6, Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, Windows 11 ARM(1)

.
While it's not as mature as Apple Silicon, it already proves to have a better performance/battery life ratio than any x86-based laptop 

(1) Patches for Linux will be released for v6.12, will have to wait until October 

I think you mean Windows 11 for ARM is not as mature. Its hard to claim silicon in the Snapdragon family is not as mature as others. The success of these machines will probably rest a lot of how well they emulate an x86, to run a wide range of existing software through a transition period. One thing Apple have done well more than once it to bring old ISA software onto their new ISA hardware. Most people make a total mess of it, as MS has done multiple times.

[shapirus]

The success of these machines will probably rest a lot of how well they emulate an x86, to run a wide range of existing software through a transition period.

Who cares about x86? Almost everything can be recompiled into native ARM binaries. Of course there's still a bunch of closed-source junk out there that's either not offered for ARM or is abandoned and never existed for ARM, but, again, who cares, and worst case it can still be run under qemu or whatever.

[coppice]

The success of these machines will probably rest a lot of how well they emulate an x86, to run a wide range of existing software through a transition period.

Who cares about x86? Almost everything can be recompiled into native ARM binaries. Of course there's still a bunch of closed-source junk out there that's either not offered for ARM or is abandoned and never existed for ARM, but, again, who cares, and worst case it can still be run under qemu or whatever.

99% of people care a lot. You are the exception.

[DiTBho]

Who cares about x86? Almost everything can be recompiled into native ARM binaries.

FinalCut is the perfect example, as in a very short time, it was ported to Apple Silicon, and compiled natively, rather than continuing to run x86 stuff in emulation.

This makes me understand that not only does it make sense, but it can be done very well, not only as a "principle", but also from a practical and commercial point of view!

Adobe/Premiere could be the counterexample, at least I expect Adobe to do something similar for Windows 11 ARM, releasing a native and optimized version for Snapdragon.

Otherwise it's very simple: I will go ahead not buing any Premiere or any Snapdragon hardware simply because it is better to invest money on Finalcut for AppleSilicon!

In my opinion, this should be the market logic!

[JPortici]

The success of these machines will probably rest a lot of how well they emulate an x86, to run a wide range of existing software through a transition period.

Who cares about x86? Almost everything can be recompiled into native ARM binaries. Of course there's still a bunch of closed-source junk out there that's either not offered for ARM or is abandoned and never existed for ARM, but, again, who cares, and worst case it can still be run under qemu or whatever.

is there a VB6 runtime that runs under ARM?

[shapirus]

is there a VB6 runtime that runs under ARM?

No idea. Is this BS even used outside of computer literacy classes in the elementary school?

[coppice]

is there a VB6 runtime that runs under ARM?

No idea. Is this BS even used outside of computer literacy classes in the elementary school?

There is an enormous amount of old VB6 code that people still rely on for thousands of niche applications most of us don't even realise exist. They aren't going to be overhauled any time soon. There's plenty of Delphi and other stuff, too.

[shapirus]

is there a VB6 runtime that runs under ARM?

No idea. Is this BS even used outside of computer literacy classes in the elementary school?

There is an enormous amount of old VB6 code that people still rely on for thousands of niche applications most of us don't even realise exist. They aren't going to be overhauled any time soon. There's plenty of Delphi and other stuff, too.

Well, niche applications are hardly a target for an ARM-based laptop. Those will still be fine, as x86 systems aren't going away anytime soon.

Going back to the initial question, in all seriousness, ARM systems should be good enough, and will quickly improve, for general home&office work. Those running MacOS (and Linux -- mostly for servers) have been good in this role for quite a while now; Windows-based ones are relatively new, but I don't see why the majority of typical desktop software wouldn't be made available for ARM soon enough.

[coppice]

is there a VB6 runtime that runs under ARM?

No idea. Is this BS even used outside of computer literacy classes in the elementary school?

There is an enormous amount of old VB6 code that people still rely on for thousands of niche applications most of us don't even realise exist. They aren't going to be overhauled any time soon. There's plenty of Delphi and other stuff, too.

Well, niche applications are hardly a target for an ARM-based laptop. Those will still be fine, as x86 systems aren't going away anytime soon.

Someone buying a laptop in 2024 is buying a replacement, and it needs to run the stuff they use. They might use two machines in an office, but a laptop needs to meet all their on-the-go needs.

This is something a lot of engineers, excited by the latest shiny new thing, miss. If you are not offer something utterly new, like the very first computer someone gets, you need to deal with all the baggage of the past. Anything you miss can lead to very low adoption of the shiny new thing. You are limited to early adopters. You see this all the time in various forms of telecoms and computing.

[JPortici]

is there a VB6 runtime that runs under ARM?

No idea. Is this BS even used outside of computer literacy classes in the elementary school?

Yes, or microsoft should feel the need to release a statement ensuring support for years to come
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-basic-6/visual-basic-6-support-policy
While all the new stuff i put out is written with Qt, we have many OLD applications in VB6. Old as in as old as myself (well, not quite, but you get the idea as the first inception was with VB5, or maybe even VB4)
I have tried to get approval for rewrite over the last 5+ years, but it's a many months job and it will be postponed until absolutely necessary.
Also there are a ton of small third party tools to interface to old hardware that are VB5/VB6 applications

[Marco]

In the meantime, Snapdragon laptops, equipped with Windows 11

Completely useless.

As usual the last decade, Microsoft copies Apple poorly, while not building on its own strengths. Or hell, sabotages it's own strengths while Apple starts copying them (dynamic island is just the mobile evolution of the system tray, animated/interactive widgets are toys but it's funny MacOS started supporting them as Microsoft killed Live Tiles).

System level control (x86 bios settings are generally ridiculous, etc), LPDDR on MCM (or HBM), some low powered cores to do video rundown tests (no practical use, but it's good PR) and the ability to spend money on die size to run the iGPU at lower clocks and to buy into TSMC's top node. All those matter far more than ISA. ARM is a distraction for Microsoft on desktops.

They should use that effort to work on Win32-v2, so they can deprecate WinRT (COM indirection is slow, not great for power consumption either).

[DiTBho]

Completely useless.

bah, have you tried it?

I have(2), and I can say they arrived late, more than five years late, but they got there, and the lenovo I mentioned before I can assure you that as a Windows/business laptop is a thousand times better than any Windows/x86(1) based laptop because the performance is good with batteries lasting almost almost two working days of 7 hours each!


(1) cannot say anything about GNU/Linux because patches will be only available for kernel >= 6.12
(2) one of my firends is a journalist. He received a laptop from Lenovo for review, so I got to try it out for a couple of days and give him some feedback on what I thought: not as great as the Apple Book Air, but pretty good!

[rteodor]

In the meantime, Snapdragon laptops, equipped with Windows 11, have been launched on the market.

• Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen6, Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, Windows 11 ARM(1)

.
While it's not as mature as Apple Silicon, it already proves to have a better performance/battery life ratio than any x86-based laptop 


(1) Patches for Linux will be released for v6.12, will have to wait until October 

Tuxedo announced that they work on a Linux 14 inch Notebook but so far they do not have a date.
They say that patches to kernel were pushed as early as 6.8 by Linaro with whom Qualcom works. There is still work to do.

[DiTBho]

umm, comparing prices ... well .... the Snapdragon laptop I tried costs 2K euro.
It's in a price range that's a little higher than what i paid for the Apple Book Air.

Here, i'm hoping Lenovo will make some tweaks though.
It's the law of the market, anyway, the more widespread a good is, the less it costs.

[DiTBho]

Tuxedo announced that they work on a Linux 14 inch Notebook but so far they do not have a date.
They say that patches to kernel were pushed as early as 6.8 by Linaro with whom Qualcom works. There is still work to do.

Patches are mostly about drivers and misc, and they are all "platform-specific" stuff.
So you can't just take them from other/similar platforms and think they're good "as-is".

Yes, they are definitely similar, so you can adapt them, but there's still work to be done.
Either you do it yourself, as I often do (e.g. for the Teres 1.0, and subsequent 1.5 and 2.0, both prototypes, similar to the 1.0).
Or you have to wait for someone else to do it.

In that case, devs all agreed to release(1) them on public 6.12, and not before!


(1) which also implies that Ubuntu and the like distros will have time to integrate them.
In the meantime - yes - if you really want and know how to do it
you can still work on development repos, with things that only partially work, because they are being worked on.

[Marco]

I have(2), and I can say they arrived late, more than five years late, but they got there, and the lenovo I mentioned before I can assure you that as a Windows/business laptop is a thousand times better than any Windows/x86(1) based laptop because the performance is good with batteries lasting almost almost two working days of 7 hours each!

Full HD laptop?

Some of the 125U get close to the power consumption and in principle if Windows was truly optimized for it, the 155U should be able to run in low power mode exactly the same. I doubt Windows is truly optimized for Meteor Lake though. They have two LP cores on the SOC tile so in theory it can shut off the entire CPU tile, but I know in Linux that's not possible at the moment (can't migrate CPU0 stuff like interrupts). I doubt Windows can do it either. Given Microsoft's tendency to infight, I doubt they are trying very hard to optimize Intel battery life now that they have ARM to want to sell.

[DiTBho]

Full HD laptop?

full company laptop 

I don't know what's under the hood, I can only tell you that I used it for two days, taking it with me on the subway, in and out of the office.

I wrote and simulated a few vhdl things on it, a not too complex project that takes up 40% of the resources of a spartan3-250. I then wrote the documentation in OpenOffice, and I used wifi a lot because I was connected to remote servers (including ssh), and I massively used pdf reader a lot to read the documentation.

Everything worked well, except the printer that wasn't recognized right away and made me suffer a bit.

But in all of this I was really surprised by how smoothly Windows11 arm works, how little it heats up, and how long the batteries last.

If anything, one thing I really didn't like was a single central fan:
- under heavy load, it makes too much noise and creates an annoying thermal gradient
- no company laptop uses a single fan anymore, everyone uses two

[DiTBho]

"Intel core ultra" ... time 

[madires]

Senior Intel CPU architects splinter to develop RISC-V processors — veterans establish AheadComputing (https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/senior-intel-cpu-architects-splinter-to-develop-risc-v-processors-veterans-establish-aheadcomputing)

[brucehoult]

Senior Intel CPU architects splinter to develop RISC-V processors — veterans establish AheadComputing (https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/senior-intel-cpu-architects-splinter-to-develop-risc-v-processors-veterans-establish-aheadcomputing)

These seem to have been people who were working on the Royal / Beast Lake project. The instigator of that project, Jim Keller, joined RISC-V company Tenstorrent in January 2021. I think Jim was also responsible for the switch to P and E cores in the latest couple of generations of shipping chips -- as well as for Zen in a stint at AMD.

[coppice]

Senior Intel CPU architects splinter to develop RISC-V processors — veterans establish AheadComputing (https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/senior-intel-cpu-architects-splinter-to-develop-risc-v-processors-veterans-establish-aheadcomputing)

These seem to have been people who were working on the Royal / Beast Lake project. The instigator of that project, Jim Keller, joined RISC-V company Tenstorrent in January 2021. I think Jim was also responsible for the switch to P and E cores in the latest couple of generations of shipping chips -- as well as for Zen in a stint at AMD.

I've watched Jim Keller talk a few times, and I can never figure out if his key skills are technical, organisational or BS spotting. He certainly seems to have had a very positive impact wherever he has gone.