Arm is making bold claims again, aiming to capture 50% of the Windows market share

Author: Zhang Yifan

Editor: Shen Siqi

Source: Hard AI

At the 2024 Computex exhibition, both Qualcomm and ARM emphasized the rise of the Win-ARM ecosystem.

Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X Elite/Plus platform, which will be widely used in various forms of PCs such as desktops, all-in-ones, laptops, tablets, and 2-in-1 devices. Qualcomm emphasized that the Snapdragon X platform has significantly improved performance and power consumption, with efficiency 2.6 times that of Apple's M3 and 5.4 times that of Intel Core Ultra 7 155H.

Top executives from six major PC brands including Microsoft, Asus, Acer, HP, Dell, and Lenovo personally took the stage to support the Snapdragon X platform.

Meanwhile, ARM's CEO stated today, "I believe that ARM's market share in Windows may exceed 50% in the next five years." He also predicted that by the end of 2025, there will be 1 trillion AI devices using ARM processors.

I. Competition between x86 and ARM

The CEO's statement that "ARM's market share in Windows may exceed 50%" has made ARM's share in the PC field more clear.

As we mentioned in the article "Value Soars by 30%, AI PCs to Drive Semiconductor Shipments | AI Dehydration" before, in the AI PC era, processors will gradually shift from x86 to ARM architecture.

This is mainly because AI computing demands "high performance, low power consumption" from chips, and ARM architecture has advantages over x86 architecture in this aspect.

Currently, Qualcomm, NVDA, AMD, and MediaTek have all collaborated with Microsoft and successively launched processor products based on ARM architecture.

Morgan Stanley previously estimated that by 2027, sales of WoA (Windows on ARM) PC chips will reach 50 million units, bringing in $10 billion in PC CPU revenue.

The CEO's statement has once again clarified ARM's growth trajectory - "Within five years, the market share may exceed fifty percent" (currently only around ten percent).

If ARM's push is successful, the market will once again face a "reshuffle." For processor manufacturers like Qualcomm and MediaTek who have deep expertise in the ARM architecture field for many years, this is a huge opportunity.

II. ARM's Ecosystem Issue

Windows on ARM (WoA) was proposed as early as 2011, but due to lack of support from a complete ecosystem, it has not been successful Ideally, Windows on ARM can enjoy the advantages of low power consumption and long battery life brought by ARM architecture processors, while also continuing the software usage habits of x86 PC users.

Over the years, due to the lack of a hardware-software integrated ecosystem like Apple's, ARM CPUs in Microsoft's Windows ecosystem remain a niche player, accounting for only 12.8% of the market share, while x86 still holds nearly 70% of the market share.

III. Introduction of Prism Translation Layer

To address the ecosystem issue of ARM, Qualcomm partnered with Microsoft and introduced the Prism translation layer.

Taking reference from Apple's ARM architecture, which uses its self-developed Rosetta 2 translation layer technology to enable developers to seamlessly run most Intel Mac applications on Mac without the need for additional development, Microsoft also introduced the translation layer - Prism, to better support ARM compatibility.

• In 2021, Microsoft released Windows 11 on ARM, introducing x86-64 bit emulation technology to translate x86 instructions into ARM instructions, allowing x86 applications to run on ARM hardware.

• In 2022, Microsoft launched the ARM64 version of IDE tool Visual Studio 2022 official version, making it easier to directly compile ARM programs that can run on Windows 11, further accelerating the migration of the Windows ecosystem to ARM. Subsequently, tools like .NET 6 and VC++ also support ARM compilation.

• In May 2024, with the update of Windows 11, this emulation technology received a new name - Prism.

According to the information released by Microsoft, Prism is not just a new name for the old translation technology, but also optimized in terms of performance, with translated applications running 10% to 20% faster on the same ARM hardware.

However, due to the additional layer of instruction translation added by Prism, the performance is usually lower than native ARM applications. Microsoft stated that they will continue to optimize Prism to improve the performance and compatibility of emulated applications, reducing runtime overhead.

IV. Improvement in Qualcomm Chip Performance

At this conference, Qualcomm introduced the X Elite/Plus platform and revealed a significant improvement in performance.

Previously, in the article "Qualcomm's Next-Generation Chips, Beating Apple with 'Apple'?", we mentioned that Qualcomm acquired Apple's chip team Nuvia and will use a new self-developed Oryon core in the next-generation chips Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon 8 Gen4 This kernel can greatly improve the processor's performance in power consumption and efficiency.

NUVIA's CPU architecture is world-class, with the potential to compete with Apple and even surpass it.

At this conference, Qualcomm provided more specific numbers ——

The NPU efficiency of Snapdragon X Elite is 2.6 times that of Apple M3 and 5.4 times that of Intel Core Ultra 7 155H.

Furthermore, compared to Apple M3, Qualcomm's NPU has increased bandwidth by 35%, CPU performance by 28%, and battery life by 19%.

It is foreseeable that with the gradual resolution of ARM ecosystem issues and the accelerated improvement of Qualcomm chip performance, ARM's layout in the PC field will accelerate. Perhaps as Haas predicted, "ARM's market share in Windows may exceed 50% in the next five years."