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2020: Whether Windows-on-Arm will become the main innovation of 2021?
In the PC market there were no radical updates long ago, however there is a probability that in the nearest future the situation can change. Distribution of an ecosystem of Windows-on-Arm capable to break monopoly of Wintel will become the reason for that. The journalist Leonid Chernyak in article prepared for TAdviser explains in what the reasons of success of Windows-on-Arm.
By Slovosliyaniye Wintel it is formed from Windows and Intel. Such neologisms call in English portmanteau, literally "a folding purse", on this case there is a special linguistic term "a hybrid morph" (a morph - the minimum significant text unit). The informal alliance Wintel developed in the 80-90th years. Its emergence was promoted by complementary activity of Microsoft and Intel: they are better than others could use conditions for the monopolization of operating systems and processors for personal computers which developed thanks to an open architecture of IBM PC. The last became the standard de facto for the PC.
The normal industry closed technical standards are supported by special international committees, and in this case the standard was open. As a result, the ecosystem of the PC working under Windows where companies Microsoft, Intel and its only much less modest in terms of the scope of, but the influential competitor of AMD dominated was spontaneously formed.
They in a food chain are followed actually by PC makers whose activity is supported by producers of component parts, and all ecosystem creates conditions for application developers. And only Apple was capable to resist Wintel that is explained by its extremely verified marketing policy relying, on the one hand, on high quality of products, and with another it was promoted by the known social phenomenon which is called in English by conspicuous consumption. In Russian this demonstrative or prestigious consumption.
In any consumer market there has to be something, not an exception intended for consumer elite, the PC market and mobile devices. The bipolar PC World consisting of Wintel and Apple found the stability sufficient for preserving of balance up to the last time.
In the market of mobile devices there was a similar portmanteau-system - Armdroid. This morph is formed of names of processors ARM and operating system Android. Its success was provided by two circumstances. From the hardware point of view it is the technical policy pursued by ARM Holding. It provided to processors absolute leadership in balance of a triad of characteristics of PPA (Performance, Power and Area) necessary a share of mobile devices. An essence of PPA in achievement of an optimal ratio of performance, power consumption and area of a crystal, more precisely, on number of transistors that is especially critical for devices with self-contained supply.
From the program point of view – the successful adaptation of Linux performed under the leadership of Andy Rubin. Before it worked in Apple where for hobby for androids he got the nickname Android. Both was also postponed for the name of the operating system. The ecosystem was also under construction on the basis of the processors licensed at ARM and adapted to requirements of IOS.
After Wintel and Armdroid premises for creation of one more ecosystem – Windows-on-Arm (WoA) appeared about 10 years ago. This morph reflects the idea of transfer of Windows in the PC with the processor created on architecture of ARM.
Transition to less power-intensive processors considerably raises operating time from the accumulator and gives the chance to use them in more convenient mode of gadgets for what they were called by "the PC with permanent connection" (Always Connected PC, AC-PC). Being guided by it by the idea, a number of the companies, without thinking twice, went in the front way, borrowing processors mobile phones. But they did not cope with an assigned task, and the first wave of AC-PC ended with a frank failure (in more detail about it is in blocks below).
On this background it is difficult to understand some domestic companies trying to repeat now this experiment.
The first pancake which left a lump did not bury desire to construct AC-PC which could conform to requirements imposed to the normal PC and to be convenient as the mobile communication device. For solution of the problem of creation of full-fledged AC-PC of Microsoft, ARM and Qualcomm company (Quality and Communication) formed the tripartite alliance where everyone got a role inherent to it. Microsoft is creation of the operating system: creation of Windows 10 of on ARM providing to users that quality of the interface which usual mobile devices create them, support of traditional applications and creation of conditions for developers. For this purpose it is required to recompile under all proprietary and third-party applications and also to provide emulation of offers of x86 and x64 for work running Windows 10 Arm. And on ARM and Qualcomm – design of "iron".
Both companies belong to the category of so-called besfabrichny (fabless). Products of their detail is the technical, technology documentation and other materials necessary for production of crystals. ARM projects and licenses cores of Qualcomm company, and it, in turn, projects the single-crystal multiprocessor systems (Multi-Processor System-on-Chip, MPSoC).
Production is transferred to the specialized company, in our case of the Taiwan TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). Today TSMC is the leader in this segment and the partner for most the besfabrichny companies. Complete a chain of the company under whose brand are issued finished and ready to delivery to users of Always Connected PC.
For years of the existence of ARM which was on November 27, 2020 30 years old issued the enormous number of projects of processors, from the smallest, used in microcontrollers, to on what build the supercomputers entering top-500. In the context of AC-PC interest new representatives of the family of cores which is figuratively called Cortex i.e. "cerebral cortex" are of to us. By the way, there is a Russian-language medical term "cortex". The subset of Cortex-A consists of two tens of cores differing among themselves as with architecture 32-bit ARM Cortex-A (ARMv7), and 64-bit ARM Cortex-A (ARMv8-A).
Since 2011 ARM licenses not only main cores, but also original technology of a two-level clustering of cores ARM big.LITTLE. It represents a dynamic management system for cores for maximizing high-speed performance at minimization of energy costs, implementing thereby the two first components in the known triad of PPA (Performance, Power and Area).
The ARM big.LITTLE technology gives the chance to create MPSoC according to the heterogeneous scheme "two in one", i.e. to combine on one substrate two clusters of cores where one cluster consists of four economic, but less productive (LITTLE), other of four more powerful (big) and more "greedy" cores.
On functionality these clusters are identical, and their cores have access to the general for them of memory that allows the dynamic ARM big.LITTLE mechanism to perform instant transition (swapping) from one cluster to another during the lowering or the eminence of loading. It significantly reduces energy consumption. The ARM big.LITTLE technology was renamed into DynamIQ later.
The ARM big.LITTLE technology was repaid in mobile phones and after in 2016 ARM released rather powerful core of ARM Cortex-A73, it became possible to be extended also to AC-PC. Further Qualcomm which released MPSoC Snapdragon 835 (from Snap and Dragon literally capture and a dragon) made on technology of 10 nanometers a year later got down to business. In it a cluster of big cores were 4 centers of Kryo 280 Gold on the basis of ARM Cortex-A73, and a cluster of small cores - 4 cores of Kryo 280 Silver based on ARM Cortex-A53. Besides, on the chip the DSP Hexagon 682 processor for work with audio-and video this and the cellular Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE modem was placed.
Opportunities of MPSoC Snapdragon 835 appeared enough that first generation of full-fledged AC-PC left under trademarks of Asus, HP and Lenovo in 2018. It turns out that the cycle from new model of a core to ready AC-PC is equal to about two years. To predict emergence of new AC-PC, we will look as events develop in ARM. The company promptly updates a line of the senior Cortex models: in 2018 ARM Cortex-A76, in 2019 ARM Cortex-A77, and in the 2020th is announced by ARM Cortex-A78, the lineal heir of A76 and A77 with the increased size of caches and capacity of data transmission channels. Besides it is made on technology of 5 nanometers, but not 7 nanometers.
Arm Cortex-A78 became the representative of fourth generation of the ARM processors supported by the DynamIQ mechanism. Arm Cortex-A78 is completed with the graphic processor Arm Mali-G78 GPU and the Arm Ethos-N78 NPU neuroprocessor. Along with it public the Cortex-X Custom (CXC) program setting as the purpose creation of processors of the increased performance became. This absolutely new direction in activity of ARM. It is supposed that all cores will be big. But more precisely we learn about features of new family in 2021.
And, at last, at the beginning of November Cortex-A78C, mainly different from A78 was announced by homogeneity: in it all 8 cores "big", it is obviously similar to Cortex-X1.
Qualcomm announces the platforms of Snapdragon for Windows 10C with approximately annual time log in relation to ARM. To Snapdragon 835 in June, 2018 Snapdragon 850, in December, 2018 - Snapdragon 855, in November and December of the 2019th - Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G increased. In them performance measures consistently raise – the sizes of caches, exchange rates with memory increase, there are new controllers, for example NVM Express 4x for access to solid state drives (SSD) connected on the bus PCI Express.
Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G includes:
- Support 4G of LTE, 5G and Wi-Fi 6;
- Several technologies of support of multimedia including GPU;
- Qualcomm AI Engine, the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) processor supporting machine learning;
- Several technologies for security, including face recognition and fingerprints, support of Windows Hypervisor and Secured-core PC technologies, access audit to public mobile Wi-Fi, etc.
If to assume that Snapdragon 8cx or Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G will become base for the next generation of AC-PC, then 2021 will become critical, and these PCs will press traditional notebooks. Confidence in such course of events is confirmed by failure of Apple from x86 processors advantage of ARM. CPU M1 Apple consists of eight cores separated into two clusters: four big Firestorm and four LITTLE Icestorm. The built-in GPU has eight cores of which 128 executive blocks are the share. Independent testing showed higher performance and energy efficiency, than on Intel processors.
In parallel with ARM processors develops the server version of the core of Neoverse N1 which will be implemented in Altra processors from Ampere and Graviton2 company from Amazon. So in the server market it is possible to expect essential motions.
2018
Gemalto builds in eSIM processors of Qualcomm
On May 28, 2018 the Gemalto company announced embedding of the SIM card in processors of Qualcomm. Thanks to this cooperation the eSIM technology will gain wide commercial circulation in the market as will find application in different notebooks, tablets and Always Connected computers. Read more here.
The beginning of sales of Windows notebooks on processors of Qualcomm
On February 21, 2018 Microsoft announced the beginning of sales of the first Windows notebooks which is based on processors of Qualcomm. For wide circulation of these products several contracts with large retailers were signed.
It is about the portable computers created within the concept of Always Connected PC. Such PCs, like smartphones, are always connected to cellular and other networks, long time work without recharge and quickly leave sleep mode.
The senior director on product management in Qualcomm Miguel Nunes says that the company "took everything that could from mobile phones, and transferred it to larger body". Always Connected PC devices have bezventilyatorny construction, a thin form factor and modems of Qualcomm, he listed.
The first Always Connected PC models are HP Envy x2, ASUS NovaGo and Lenovo Miix 630 which are equipped with the Snapdragon 835 processor with eight cores of Kryo 280 with clock rate to 2.45 GHz and the graphic Adreno 540 accelerator. At the MWC 2018 exhibition which at the end of February will take place in Barcelona the presentation of new similar products is expected.
The laptops constructed on a hardware platform of Qualcomm Snapdragon and program Windows 10 in USA will be on sale in shops Microsoft Online Store and Amazon, in Australia — in Microsoft Store, in China — through the retailer JD.com, in Italy — through the IT distributor of Unieuro.
All devices support of work in LTE networks of large operators, such as Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T integrates, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, China Telecom (Chayna Telecom) and Telstra. Information on the Russian market on the moment of writing of material is absent.
According to the message of Qualcomm, the first Always Connected PC computers at first will appear in the USA, Australia, China, Italy, France and Great Britain. The cost of products begins with $600.[1]
Till 2017: History and premises of emergence of Always Connected PC
Evolutionary chain of mobile computers if to discard numerous deadlock branches, approximately is as follows: in the early eighties of the XX century there were first variegated mobile computers, in ten years they purchased the unified notebook appearance remaining until now, and two-thousand years of the 21st century were mentioned by emergence of netbooks and tablets. There was also a parallel branch - mobile phones. Their evolution went some other way, but with the advent of smartphones both branches were crossed. And then convergence continued that led to emergence of so-called "cellular PCs". This phenomenon can turn out so considerable that it was called by Cellular PC Revolution. In vanguard of another revolution two companies – Microsoft and Qualcomm, and its main support ARM processors.
Failures of computers on ARM
In the late nineties of the XX century left Acorn Archimedes scene - the only serial computer on the ARM processor with the original Arthur operating system, it would seem forever having carried away with themselves an image of the computer on this processor. Since then the ARM Holding company entirely focused on development of processors. It became a core of the enormous ecosystem consisting generally of designers and SoC producers for the built-in systems. Neither the PC, nor servers for nearly 20 years practically was.
However with the advent of ARMv8 at once in several places there was a thought of return of ARM to computing, first of all where it is required to minimize energy consumption. All it seemed simply, well why and really not to develop the computer on ARMv8 where in addition to 32-bit AArch32 mode there is 64-bit AArch64 mode which is implemented in cores of Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57. There is nothing surprising that were fond of this obvious idea in China where it materialized in the form of phone hybrid with the Skylight computer released in 2009 Lenovo. In Skylight there was a telephone processor of Qualcomm and Linux OS adapted to it. Such trivial front approach to solution of the problem of creation of the computer with small consumption was initially doomed to a failure, and in 2010 by Skylight, despite certain advantages, died. Separate observed attempts to develop computers in the same way were doomed to Mips.
In Microsoft approached a problem of creation of the economic notebook, at first sight, much more thoughtfully. Here own concept of AC-PC (Always Connected PC) was developed. Following it, in 2012 Microsoft released the Surface RT notebook tablet on the Nvidia Tegra 3 processor created for smartphones and tablets. The processor was released at the end of 2011 and equipped with four cores of Cortex A9. Microsoft decided that Surface RT will work under management of mobile version of OS Windows RT directly at the ARM platform, having assumed at the same time that that Windows RT will not support normal Windows applications for x86. As a result the circle of the possible Surface RT applications was considerably narrowed, and there is nothing surprising that the sales volume of innovation appeared many times less expected. Therefore in the next version of Surface it was necessary to refuse ARM for benefit of Intel. This Surface Pro netbook worked running normal Windows 8 and differed from similar products of other companies little, having stopped being at the same time the conceived AC-PC.
If desired it is possible to detect some more less significant attempts to create energy efficient computers on ARM.
Readiness of Microsoft for a revenge
The idea of Always Connected PC visibly revived in 2017 when leading manufacturers of the PC - Asus, HP and Lenovo announced the models of the class PC-AC on the processor of Qualcomm 835. Capability of new models to work almost day from batteries opens an opportunity to bring closer the PC on a usage mode to the mobile phone, an exception - loading procedures. And more serious orientation to Internet access on 4G/5G gives even more grounds to publicly call them Always Connected PC.
In news the main attention is paid to products of Asus, HP and Lenovo, their consumer characteristics, the prices, etc. But the main heroes of revolution of cellular PCs are Microsoft and Qualcomm. The first provided a possibility of accomplishment of any traditional for h86 applications on the processor with architecture of ARM, and the second the corresponding processor of Qualcomm 835.
Microsoft, after noticeable loss in the market of cellular telephony, aims at a revenge, and Qualcomm, having become the producer of processes for computers, purchases the other person. If there are these two major components, all the rest - a trick.
As present AC-PC, unlike what was at the beginning of the 2010th work running Windows 10, there are no restrictions for applications. The compatibility with x86 required for this purpose is reached due to emulation of command system of architecture of x86 by the ARM commands. To avoid deceleration of Microsoft, natural to any emulation, developed a number of the means accelerating this technology, first of all caching algorithms. Without technologies of emulation of x86 on ARM it is impossible to imagine wide dissemination of Windows on this platform. Generally speaking, in this solution there is nothing absolutely new. In due time something similar was made by Apple upon transition from Power PC processors to Intel processors. As practice shows, the reasonable organization of emulation not strongly influences performance.
Negative reaction to emulation of x86 as Intel as the company, aims to save the intellectual property is not excluded. Certain hints on objections from Intel were already made. At this Intel refers to the known precedent of a lawsuit with Transmeta company. It developed the Efficeon microprocessor on VLIW technology with a 256-bit word in which the x86 programs were executed by means of morphing of the code, i.e. conversion of code sequence of one type in another. However Transmeta finished the existence even before the end of judicial proceedings. Happen on another, it would be unknown what the court ended.
However, Microsoft is at all not Transmeta, and the conflict with Intel, most likely, does not frighten her, it goes on it is considered. The union of Microsoft with Qualcomm not surprise. For a long time it is known of desire of Microsoft to leave the Wintel coalition and to create new, sometimes it is called by WinARM. The reason of dissenting behavior of Microsoft has a simple explanation. Matter in awareness of hopelessness of the duumvirat of Microsoft/Intel which existed three decades and developed naturally thanks to that scheme which was offered by IBM in IBM PC.
The current PC market developed under the influence of openness of architecture of IBM PC. The system of interfaces gives freedom to all – to component manufacturers, the periphery, the ready systems and applications, but leaves a possibility of monopoly for processors and operating systems. That is why two monopolists integrated and there was Wintel. On their background the phenomenon of Apple is that exception which confirms the rule. Nevertheless the scheme of Microsoft/Intel did not become absolutely outdated yet, it perfectly worked and will work vaguely long in a PC segment. But as showed life, it is not suitable for cellular telephony. Not casually both Microsoft, and Intel turned out a complete fiasco in this segment. It is possible to assume that Microsoft in anticipation of the future Always Connected PC market aims to be autonomized and selects the way.
Way of Qualcomm
The Qualcomm company is less known, than Intel, though is among the largest semiconductor producers. Holding mid position in the top ten, it all is three times less than Intel on number occupied and on turnover. But Qualcomm belongs to the category fabless where it wins first place, advancing Broadcomm, AMD and Nvidia. Its leadership in category PC-AC is explained by two interconnected circumstances – the design approach of processors chosen by it and the ecosystem created by it at the same time.
Traditionally since Intel the 4004th processor was designed as the finished product. Annually the nomenclature of processors constantly extends, but nevertheless the market of processors could be compared to shop of ready-to-wear clothes where you can select from the available range what suits you. However in the same world of clothes as however and in many other areas, there are alternative approaches. Some prefer to purchase the things adjusted to you from semi-finished products (semi-custom) or sewed directly under you (full-custom). Approximately the same occurs in the world of processors. Already there is semi-custom design processor, and also full-custom design processor are in the long term quite real. Transition on indposhiv is supposed in the RISC-V (RISC five) project. Its purpose - an open architecture of RISC. Founders are researchers from Computer Science Division, the University of California of Berkeley with the assistance of David Patterson who together John Hennessy was a coauthor of RISC.
Qualcomm mastered semi-custom design. It takes the ready cores designed by ARM Holding, brings to the level of a semi-finished product and transfers him to either chipmakers, or designers SoC, and those in turn or make ready-made products, or transfer the project to those who makes chips. This three or a four-unit chain sometimes is called by social business. There are alternative ideas of social business, in this case the sociality is understood restrictedly as an opportunity to distribute production of an end product between a large number of the companies, having taken from everyone that the best, than it locates. As a result there is an ecosystem, qualitatively other, than at Intel.
This system proved the advantage in production of mobile devices. It is indicative that having spent huge amounts of money, the adherent of the classical scheme of Intel left mobile business, and ARM, thanks to Qualcomm, became in it the monopolist. When speak about war of ARM with Intel, it is necessary to understand is not war of technologies, and it is rather the war of models of business and model tested on phones approaches PC-AC, in it its future better.
You See Also
- History of Microsoft
- History of Apple
- History of IBM
- History of Intel
- History of Hewlett-Packard (HP)
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