'Prism' Translation Layer Does For Arm PCs What Rosetta Did For Macs (arstechnica.com) 37
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft is going all-in on Arm-powered Windows PCs today with the introduction of a Snapdragon X Elite-powered Surface Pro convertible and Surface Laptop, and there are inevitable comparisons to draw with another big company that recently shifted from Intel's processors to Arm-based designs: Apple. A huge part of the Apple Silicon transition's success was Rosetta 2, a translation layer that makes it relatively seamless to run most Intel Mac apps on an Apple Silicon Mac with no extra effort required from the user or the app's developer. Windows 11 has similar translation capabilities, and with the Windows 11 24H2 update, that app translation technology is getting a name: Prism.
Microsoft says that Prism isn't just a new name for the same old translation technology. Translated apps should run between 10 and 20 percent faster on the same Arm hardware after installing the Windows 11 24H2 update, offering some trickle-down benefits that users of the handful of Arm-based Windows 11 PCs should notice even if they don't shell out for new hardware. The company says that Prism's performance should be similar to Rosetta's, though obviously this depends on the speed of the hardware you're running it on. Microsoft also claims that Prism will further improve the translation layer's compatibility with x86 apps, though the company didn't get into detail about the exact changes it had made on this front.
Microsoft says that Prism isn't just a new name for the same old translation technology. Translated apps should run between 10 and 20 percent faster on the same Arm hardware after installing the Windows 11 24H2 update, offering some trickle-down benefits that users of the handful of Arm-based Windows 11 PCs should notice even if they don't shell out for new hardware. The company says that Prism's performance should be similar to Rosetta's, though obviously this depends on the speed of the hardware you're running it on. Microsoft also claims that Prism will further improve the translation layer's compatibility with x86 apps, though the company didn't get into detail about the exact changes it had made on this front.
SRSLY? (Score:3)
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I remember it. My spider sense started tingling immediately when I read the headline.
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I remember it. My spider sense started tingling immediately when I read the headline.
Yup, My thoughts went to prism for a translation layer? Sheesh, that isn't good.
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At least it would expertly backup one's data... /s
Re: SRSLY? (Score:2)
No, what they are doing is poisoning the well of search, as members of PRISM. They are defense contractors, they are part of the panopticon, and they have no doubt been instructed to throw up some chaff.
Re: SRSLY? (Score:1)
BINGO!
i686 (Score:2)
Everything (Score:2)
I would assume x86 and x64, as there is still quite a bit of 32-bit code floating around. Looking at my task manager, there are 32-bit services running from Adobe and VMWare.
Re: Everything (Score:1)
Iâ(TM)m not sure about 32 bit code as that is a massive translation. 64 bit instructions are generally just a lookup away of having a similar enough series of instructions on ARM, since 64 bit Intel is really just a RISC architecture with 32 bit extensions.
Microsoft has been trying really hard to get rid of 32 bit and failing thus far, the last time they tried going with Qualcomm (the whole reason Windows 8 exists) failed also on the 32 bit and app compatibility issue, Apple successfully got rid of 32
is it an emulator (Score:2)
Is it an emulator when Microsoft does it?
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PINE ?
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Microsoft doesn't make CPUs.
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Is it an emulator when Microsoft does it?
Depends on how they do it.
XPS (Score:4, Informative)
I’ve always used XPS15s, and I’m lucky if I get 2Hrs out of a battery.
My wife and kids use Apple macs and they get 8+ hours and I can’t even feel them warm up.
I’m very looking forward to longer battery life for those of us stuck in windows land.
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Is it broken? Independent tests show much longer battery life than that from the all recent XPS15s.
AMD machines from Lenovo get over 20 hours with stuff like video playback and basic web browsing. Seriously, 2 hours sounds very broken.
Re: XPS (Score:2)
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Maybe it is a driver issue. Have you tried asking Dell for support?
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It would be more appropriate to say you are stuck in x86 CISC land. The CISC architecture continues holding Win x86 back with inherent inefficiencies over a clean RISC design like the ARM chips being pumped out by (basically everyone) and the RISC-V innovations happening now.. Intel unfortunately abandoned Itanium, but has had an ARM division making ARM chips for ages, so the ability to switch is there, it just has to be brave and actually do it now.
Maybe PRISM opens that door and Intel can cast off CISC sh
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> I’m very looking forward to longer battery life for those of us stuck in windows land.
Unless they make some serious changes to Windows itself, and to corporate "lock downs" if you're talking corp laptops, then I predict you're going to be out of luck. They could put in a nuclear power plant and somehow Windows, search indexing, updates, Group Policy, Anti-malware and goodness knows whatever else they seem to throw in there will consume it all.
Set your expectations at say 3-4 hours of battery life
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Apple did do a major hit when they went to the ARM based silicon. My i7 MBP sounds like a jet plane taking off when doing heavy compute stuff. However, even my Apple Silicon MBP or Mac Mini, I've never heard it spin its fans up. The MBP I have can go easily for eight hours, while I can, at most, squeeze 4-6 hours out of a Windows laptop.
Windows on ARM, even with the Prism translation layer, sounds like a quite useful thing. If something is ARM native, it will use less energy, and if something needs to b
Graphpad Prism (Score:2)
whats the name for the world wide release? (Score:2)
Geo Prism?
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Red lining at 75 MPH is an unfortunate comparison.
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Hey, it got great gas mileage in its day!
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For a Toyota Corolla rebrand, it wasn't a bad vehicle. Hard to kill.
How is this meant to end? (Score:2)
It seems there is intent to retain both ISAs, x64 and ARM64, indefinitely. So, to avoid nightmare of perpetual emulation, I gather the eventual plan is to have dual built programs in some fashion? Half for each ISA so that either CPU is optimal.
Surely it won't be virtual machine only?
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Presumably, but I assume they'll also advocate for .NET as a path to avoiding emulation.
Re: How is this meant to end? (Score:2)
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Apple used to have the old fat binaries for Motorola and intel. However, my guess is that Microsoft will use this as a chance to promote their app store. Developers provide two versions or some sort of fat blob and the App Store gives the right version to each user. This creates an advantage for the App Store over a conventional download.
They were renamed Universal Binaries (no Package-Shaming!), and Nowadays, they carry Intel and Apple Silicon Binaries. And that's the way they are still distributed outside of the Mac App Store.
And they work great.
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Apple used to have the old fat binaries for Motorola and intel.
No. Those are relatively new fat binaries. Apple's old fat binaries were for 680x0 and PPC. IIRC, they also did some wacky stuff around the OS9-OSX transition.
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That occurred on the Apple side during the transition from PowerPC to Intel. A program could be considered a "universal binary [google.com]" if it had been compiled for both ISAs. I gather that developing in Xcode made it pretty easy for the developer. (They also deployed Rosetta, because sometimes a developer couldn't or
Re: How is this meant to end? (Score:2)
Is it the "same" as the Mac? (Score:1)
Ok fine there is an emulator to make Arm based windows machines able to run intel targeted software.
Thing is when Apple was transitioning architecture all the software makers were hell bent on providing native versions of their software for Arm. Is that same thing happening in the windows ecosystem?
I don't see it. Without that, how do Arm based windows machines ever be more than an experiment?
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If ARM based laptops hit the enterprise and were able to check all the boxes (AutoPilot, InTune, etc.), I can see a sea change going to ARM. However, getting businesses to understand why an upgrade cycle to ARM would benefit them would be the battle. However, with the longer battery life, better cooling, and other features, this might not be a hard sell, assuming Microsoft supported all management features and such on the ARM architecture, including WSL.
Re: Is it the "same" as the Mac? (Score:1)
The question is can it run Intel 32 bit DLL-based Office plugins? The answer is no, since even the 64 bit version of Office cannot do it to the point they are still releasing the next versions of Office in 32 bit. They only just removed 16 bit support in Windows 11, it has been a long time since 1995.