Microsoft Brings x64 Emulation to Windows on Arm PCs

[antnythr]

I've been waiting to see when this would happen, and I'm very curious to know how Intel will respond. 3 years ago Intel released a statement that they would aggressively pursue legally anyone that was working on x86 emulation.

Newsroom Home

Intel Newsroom home page

newsroom.intel.com

Intel carefully protects its x86 innovations, and we do not widely license others to use them. Over the past 30 years, Intel has vigilantly enforced its intellectual property rights against infringement by third-party microprocessors. One of the earliest examples, was Intel’s enforcement of its seminal “Crawford ’338 Patent.” In the early days of our microprocessor business, Intel needed to enforce its patent rights against various companies including United Microelectronics Corporation, Advanced Micro Devices, Cyrix Corporation, Chips and Technologies, Via Technologies, and, most recently, Transmeta Corporation. Enforcement actions have been unnecessary in recent years because other companies have respected Intel’s intellectual property rights.

However, there have been reports that some companies may try to emulate Intel’s proprietary x86 ISA without Intel’s authorization. Emulation is not a new technology, and Transmeta was notably the last company to claim to have produced a compatible x86 processor using emulation (“code morphing”) techniques. Intel enforced patents relating to SIMD instruction set enhancements against Transmeta’s x86 implementation even though it used emulation. In any event, Transmeta was not commercially successful, and it exited the microprocessor business 10 years ago.

Only time will tell if new attempts to emulate Intel’s x86 ISA will meet a different fate. Intel welcomes lawful competition, and we are confident that Intel’s microprocessors, which have been specifically optimized to implement Intel’s x86 ISA for almost four decades, will deliver amazing experiences, consistency across applications, and a full breadth of consumer offerings, full manageability and IT integration for the enterprise. However, we do not welcome unlawful infringement of our patents, and we fully expect other companies to continue to respect Intel’s intellectual property rights. Strong intellectual property protections make it possible for Intel to continue to invest the enormous resources required to advance Intel’s dynamic x86 ISA, and Intel will maintain its vigilance to protect its innovations and investments.

 

[DeepIn2U]

0%: Chance that Microsoft will make Windows run on Apple Silicon.

100%: Chance that somebody else will do it.

This has already been done in Beta 2wks back ... check main page news

 

[apparatchik]

RIGHT?!

Apple ... a MUCH smaller company and less resources of personal, coders, engineers ... yet STILL continues to innovate and lead Microsoft in numerous areas at a faster rate!



This is definitely a knee-jerk reaction by Microsoft as someone else beat them to getting this done. Now they need to make ARM64 Windows available to others via license.

I dont think Apple is smaller than Microsoft any more, that was the case back on the iPod days, Apple has by now become the largest private company in the world, they're 2 or 3 microsofts put together, the fact that they have dared to make their own silicon gives you a raw image of what they're up to, like, they're handsomely beating Intel and AMD in perf per watt, now they're even making their own 5G modems, so they might start beating Qualcomm on that fron in two years time as well...

 

[jz0309]

It is just another application for the platform. I do not expect bootcamp support, just VM support.


Apple wants to sell hardware and wants people to use their ecosystem. Some people will want to run legacy Windows applications on their Apple Silicon systems, Apple will not be involved in that other than providing Microsoft the same developer access they provide to everyone.

I would agree in saying that there will not be bootcamp on M series Macs ...

But Apple will have to provide device drivers, display etc, right?

 

[Stromos]

I would agree in saying that there will not be bootcamp on M series Macs ...

But Apple will have to provide device drivers, display etc, right?

They did for bootcamp x86 so likely yes.

 

[MacBH928]

The future seems ARM. This is what I hate about capitalism, they don't do whats best for society they do what makes more money to them hindering development. No innovation. Its what makes Apple special, they do make the jump and introduce new stuff.

I bet if Apple didn't release ARM M1 chips, Microsoft will be x86 for the next century.

 

[Karllake]

I would agree in saying that there will not be bootcamp on M series Macs ...

But Apple will have to provide device drivers, display etc, right?

There’s no bootcamp as there’s no windows arm retail, I think apple have m1 bootcamp ready now and just need Microsoft to play ball. I also don’t think Microsoft are necessarily being bad actors, they need to protect surface sales and windows arm isn’t fully matured. It’s a matter of time and it will come.

 

[IG88]

There might be something in the M1 that enables Rosetta2 to be so fast. And it's not in MS's ARM.

I believe that MS and Apple have taken very different approaches there. MS is emulating x86, Apple is not using emulation AFAIK.

 

[jz0309]

I've been waiting to see when this would happen, and I'm very curious to know how Intel will respond. 3 years ago Intel released a statement that they would aggressively pursue legally anyone that was working on x86 emulation.

Newsroom Home

Intel Newsroom home page

newsroom.intel.com

interesting find, it will indeed interesting to see if/how Intel responds

Edit: the announcement is about the enhancement of x86 32bit emulator to include 64bit - so they might have a license from Intel already?

 

[jz0309]

I dont think Apple is smaller than Microsoft any more, that was the case back on the iPod days, Apple has by now become the largest private company in the world, they're 2 or 3 microsofts put together, the fact that they have dared to make their own silicon gives you a raw image of what they're up to, like, they're handsomely beating Intel and AMD in perf per watt, now they're even making their own 5G modems, so they might start beating Qualcomm on that fron in two years time as well...

MSFT: 161k
AAPL: 147k
INTC: 111k
QCOM: 41k
AMZN: 1.1M
Walmart: 2.2M
all numbers are full-time employees, so not counting contract workers
go to yahoo finance and look at the profile page ...

Apple Inc. (AAPL) Company Profile & Facts - Yahoo Finance

See the company profile for Apple Inc. (AAPL) including business summary, industry/sector information, number of employees, business summary, corporate governance, key executives and their compensation.

finance.yahoo.com

 

[KPOM]

I believe that MS and Apple have taken very different approaches there. MS is emulating x86, Apple is not using emulation AFAIK.

Is Microsoft actually using emulation or are they just calling translation (which is what Apple is doing) “emulation”?

 

[jz0309]

Is Microsoft actually using emulation or are they just calling translation (which is what Apple is doing) “emulation”?

Microsoft is clearly calling it emulator ... read their announcement in the article ... I would hope that someone like them uses the correct technical terms, but ...

 

[IG88]

Is Microsoft actually using emulation or are they just calling translation (which is what Apple is doing) “emulation”?

Good question.

Link

What would an ARM-based operating system do with an x86 instruction? Or a chunk of x86 instructions? Or an entire x86 binary? Windows 10, for example, does this by taking a set of x86 instructions below:

push ebp
mov ebp,esp
pop ebp
nop
jmp ntdll_775d0000!LdrInitializeThunk

And translating it to the following:

str wfp,[x28,#-4]! // push ebp
mov wfp,w28 // mov ebp,esp
ldr wfp,[x28],#4 // pop ebp
add w9,w9,#0x83,lsl #0xC
add w9,w9,#0x1FE
bl 00000000`03109aa8 // (get jump function address)
br xip1 // jmp ntdll_775d0000!LdrInitializeThunk

First off, ARM and x86 are completely different architectures. An ARM processor is incapable of executing x86 code and the hardware provides no means to do so. This leaves the task up to software developers to facilitate it themselves.

Microsoft's recent version of Windows 10 for ARM-based processors assumes such a task, by simulating an x86 processor entirely in userland. An emulator module (xtajit.dll) employs a form of just-in-time (JIT) translation to convert x86 code to ARM (shown above) within a loop, as the x86 process is executing. On each pass, a chunk of x86 code is translated to ARM, and the translation is executed.

All of this, as you might have guessed, can make the experience of running x86 programs a comparatively slow experience. However, a cache of already-translated code (located in C:\Windows\XtaCache) eliminates much of the overhead. A compiler (xtac.exe) and background caching service (XtaCache) handle full binary translation and caching. Hybrid binaries (located in C:\Windows\SyChpe32) containing x86-to-ARM stubs also help to reduce overhead.

 

[Madd the Sane]

Rosetta 2 can emulate when it needs to. Such as with (x86) JIT code or anything that stumps the translation (I'm thinking Wine/Crossover). Everything else is translated at launch/install, or whenever Rosetta 2 is updated.

 

[MrTemple]

It's almost 2021. This is basically like saying there is 0% chance MS SQL Server will run on Linux. Ubuntu won't run on Windows/HyperV. Powershell for Linux. The list goes on.

Microsoft finally realized that they aren't going to control what the end user buys. They can either play nice and have tons of users or not play nice and never reach certain users. Microsoft absolutely wants you to still run Windows if you have a Mac.

This article and a lot of commenters are pretty biased. I'm already doing some tests with Win10ARM on my M1 Mac. 32-bit applications are running surprisingly well (Not perfect but plenty functional). Comments saying Microsoft are copying Apple are pretty darn laughable. You think Microsoft threw this together in a couple months? This has been an ongoing project for a long time. ARM has reached a point where it has enough power for both Apple and Microsoft to really start exploring these translation paths to embracing ARM.

I honestly didn't know they were adding 64-bit support too. This isn't Windows RT anymore this is a real player. If they do get it running in bootcamp I can already tell you from the little bit I've played with the VM its going to be a serious grandslam with the best of both worlds.

I'm pretty excited. Incredible progress in very little time.

It seems we agree, but you don't realize we agree. And then there's a lot of weird arguments you seem to be trying to attribute to me before cutting them down like so much straw... 🤷‍♂️

 

[ajfahey]

I would like to run the odd windows based app on a Mac. In fact, I pay Parallels an annual fee just to do that and, even though that comes with having to install Windows 10 in Parallels. I would prefer running them directly within the Mac OS, without the Windows overhead and complexity.

 

[Alan Wynn]

0%: Chance that Microsoft will make Windows run on Apple Silicon.

I guarantee that Microsoft will do it, but only as a VM. I do not think that Apple plans to allow Bootcamp (for many reasons, security among them).

100%: Chance that somebody else will do it.

Easy claim to make in that it has already been done. :-D

 

[RONS67]

Apple was smart enough to flush 32-bit x86 apps before transitioning to ARM.

 

[KPOM]

I guarantee that Microsoft will do it, but only as a VM. I do not think that Apple plans to allow Bootcamp (for many reasons, security among them).

Easy claim to make in that it has already been done. :-D

interesting find, it will indeed interesting to see if/how Intel responds

Yes, Apple has already said that macOS is the only OS that Apole Silicon will boot natively. Virtualization is how Linux will work. Same for Windows on ARM if Microsoft chooses to make it available.

 

[robjulo]

0%: Chance that Microsoft will make Windows run on Apple Silicon.

100%: Chance that somebody else will do it.

That makes zero business sense for Microsoft....none.

 

[Analog Kid]

Windows is not compatible with Apple's M1 Macs due to licensing issues

Licensing isn't a compatibility issue. Maybe it's better to just say "not available on"?

 

[KPOM]

That makes zero business sense for Microsoft....none.

If 10 million Mac users download copies at $100, that’s $1 billion. Not much, but not nothing, either. And it would validate ARM as a platform for Windows. Qualcomm might decide to improve their next chips, making them viable to other OEMs. I’m sure Dell, HP, Asus, et. al would like to have devices to compete with the M1 Mac’s combination of power and battery life.

 

[axboi87]

If Microsoft can get the emulation at least running reliably, even if they can't get the overhead as small as Rosetta, future beefy Macs will be fast enough that even with say, 40% overhead, could run windows apps faster than most PCs (assuming exponentially higher cpu power than typical pc). If that's the case, and I can get an iMac or Mac Pro with enough ram, my 12-core 128gb Mac Pro (trashcan) will be obsolete. so far my m1 mini at work is so much faster for nearly any task, that the only reason I have to keep this maxed out trashcan at home is for running virtual machines

 

[Yebubbleman]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Windows 10 for ARM64 running on Apple Silicon Macs is something that behooves both Apple and Microsoft. It's a serious win-win for both of them.

 

[macbookfan]

I wouldn't say 0%. Microsoft probably wants to sell more of their ARM tablets and getting Windows onto Apple Silicon Macs is a good way to increase ARM Windows user share and attract more developers.

Developers, developers, developers