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Comment by dundarious | Hacker News Reader

On a first order analysis, Qualcomm doesn't want good x64 support, because good x64 support furthers the lifetime of x64, and delays the "transition" to ARM. In the final analysis, I doubt that is an economically rational strategy, because even if there is to be a transition away from x64, you need a good legacy and migration story. And I doubt such a transition will happen in the next 10 years, and certainly not spurred by anything in Microsoft land.

So maybe it's rational after all, because they know these Windows ARM products will never succeed, so they're just saving themselves the cost/effort of good support.

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> On a first order analysis, Qualcomm doesn't want good x64 support, because good x64 support furthers the lifetime of x64, and delays the "transition" to ARM.

The logical thing for Qualcomm in their current market share to do is to implement TSO now, then after they get momentum, create a high-end/low-end tier, and disable TSO for the low-end tier to force vendors to target both ARM/x68.

What Qualcomm is doing now makes them look like they just don't care.

> create a high-end/low-end tier, and disable TSO for the low-end tier

Wouldn’t that make the low-end tier run faster than the high-end tier, or force them to leave some performance on the table there?

Also, would a per-process flag that controls TSO be possible? Ignoring whether it’s easy to do in the hardware, the only problem I can think of with that is that the OS would have to set that on processes when they start using shared memory, or forbid using shared memory by processes that do not have it set.

I would disagree that this is first order. First order is making the transition as smooth as possible, which obviously means having a very good translation layer. Only then you should even think about competing on comparability.

Does this not depend on how one sees the Arm transition matter playing out?

It at least conceivable and IMHO, plausible for Qualcomm to see Apple, phones on ARM and aging in demographics all speaking to a certain Arm transition?

I wouldn't be so sure. Windows on ARM has existed for more then a decade with almost zero adoption. Phones, both Apple and Android, have been ARM since forever. The only additional player is that Apple has moved their Macs to ARM. This to me means it would be pretty stupid for them to just throw up their hands and say "they will come". Because it didn't happen for a decade prior.

Maybe. Just trying to see it from other points of view.

A decade ago, Apple was on Intel and Microsoft had not advanced many plans in play today. Depending on the smoke they are blowing people's way, one could get an impression ARM is a sure thing.

Frankly, I have no desire to run Windows on ARM.

Linux? Yep.

And I am already on a Mac M1.

I sort of hope it fails personally. I want to see the Intel PC continue in some basic form.

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