Approaching ARM on Windows

Kubrak

@Maciej Repetowski

As for NI, judging from how long it took them to provide native apps for Apple Silicon (which nearly made me to abandon NI) - I would not keep my hopes high for anything less than 4-6 years from now (I’m being optimistic here).

IMHO, too optimistic. I expect 15-20 years. If ever. Win on ARM first must get a decent marketshare. At least 10% might take five years or so. If lucky. 20% maybe 10 years. And it is IMHO still not enought for NI to care…

Beside that, x86 is concerning power efficiency on par with ARM. So, why ARM? Win on ARM is third or so trial …. I strongly doubt, it will be successfull. Even thought MS is pushing it as much as possible. E.g. by not supporting copilot+ for x86 for a while….

Alex1974

I succeeded installing Maschine on my Windows ARM laptop. Here's how

• Download and install Native Access
• Start installation for Maschine, which probably fails or hangs
• During the attemt for installation, go to c:\Users>Public>Public Downloads. This is where Native Access temporarily stores your installation file. Copy the file to a different location and restart your pc to make sure the installation attempt by NA ends
• Unzip the installation file and manually install. You'll get an error on installing a virtual midi driver which is probably why Native Accessfails to install Maschine, but ignore the message and continue and finish installation
• Now Maschine works. You can activate it in Native Access

Native Instruments, if you read this: Pleas fix the error on installing a virtual midi driver on Windows ARM pc's.

chk071

Note that you're running these programs with a compatibility layer then though. Meaning that you won't have the performance you'd have when running them natively for your CPU. Something you don't want to have, when it comes to realtime audio.

Alex1974

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/161201#Comment_161201

Correct, it's running in x64 mode. But I'm not using Maschine that much. I have a Maschine + and sometimes need the app to edit out some groups or projects. For me it's more important that it runs, than that it runs efficiently.

chk071

Ok, fair enough.

Alex1974

But still NI should address the installation issue regarding the midi driver. Probably an easy fix which saves a lot of people trouble.

Is there somewhere I can drop the suggestion? Contacting NI directly seems impossible.

Alex1974

It seems that not NI, but Bome needs to update its virtual midi driver for ARM64. See topic below.

https://forum.bome.com/t/error-14-bome-virtual-midi-windows-11-on-arm-microsoft-surface-pro-x/4882/14

DunedinDragon

For me this is still the age-old conundrum of RISC versus CISC that's been a point of discussion for decades. Everything looks promising for RISC processors until you examine the actual marketplace in which these systems must function. MS and Apple both were initially built on the premise that hardware outperforms software, which is not necessarily the case IF the hardware is replaced with RISC based processing, which it's not for the most part, at this point. You can still do it with non RISC based processors, but as can be seen with Apple's adventure into RISC, it's not always easy and can be quite problematic. And you tend to sacrifice quite a lot of the overall gains in processing speed and heat efficiency that comes with RISC.

I personally think the promise of RISC will require a much larger investment and involvement in creating RISC based peripherals before it can gain any real traction in main general processing machines. In the music business, for example, guitar modelers have been relatively stagnant in processing power for several years now because the DSP processors have reached their practical limits, and adding more processors increases the price and heat significantly. THIS would be a practical use for RISC processors that would make a difference across an entire segment of music production. The same is likely to be true for advanced electronic keyboards as well as mixing boards and the like. But all of those applications will also require RISC based rather than hardware based A/D D/A conversion to stay consistent and gain the benefits.

I think most of these various complex peripheral segments will need to make these types of transitions for it be become practical and easier to create general purpose computers that can operate effectively and predictably in a RISC based world.

PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/160923#Comment_160923

And how on earth can I contact NI support? I can't find any contact info or support form on the website.

https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us

Select category and type and product support .

Please refer to the page : How to get in touch with our Customer Care or read my Support page functionality changes post here

chk071

As there is no software from NI which actually supports Windows on ARM, I wonder how much help you can get from support though.

willypimpernel

Windows will become a primarily ARM platform eventually, although they can’t enforce the switch like Apple because they don’t control all the hardware. I think people will buy the ARM devices simply because they’re currently better for most purposes. Hope NI release ARM versions before the range of non-ARM laptops gets too small!

Kubrak

Windows will not become primarily ARM platform. At least not in following 10 years. ARM is not more energy effective than x86, if it is made on comparable node. And if one puts Intel aside.

I strongly doubt, there will be Win Traktor for ARM. No need for.

This years' trial to introduce ARM to Win is already third one. And I bet it will fail as well as two previous ones.