A person who immediately got Microsoft's Arm-equipped PC `` Windows Development Kit 2023 '' conducted a benchmark test



Developer

Jeff Geerling has immediately obtained and tested the ' Windows Development Kit 2023 ' released by Microsoft as a Windows 11-equipped machine for developing Windows applications for Arm.

Testing Microsoft's Windows Dev Kit 2023 | Jeff Geerling
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/testing-microsofts-windows-dev-kit-2023

'Windows Development Kit 2023' is a PC with Windows 11 announced by Microsoft in May 2022 as 'Project Volterra'. The specifications and selling prices of 'Windows Development Kit 2023' are summarized in the following article.

Microsoft launches Mac mini-like 'Windows Development Kit 2023', PC for native Arm application development for Windows 11 - GIGAZINE



Mr. Geerling said that he immediately obtained such 'Windows Development Kit 2023'. The box containing 'Windows Development Kit 2023' is as follows, and it seems that it is a simple content that contains only the main body, a large power adapter, and instructions.




The output of the power adapter is 90W, and the Windows 11 hologram sticker is slightly slanted.




The main body looks like this, nothing on the front (first), two buttons and two USB-C ports on the left side (second), power port, LAN on the back (third) There is nothing on the port, Mini DisplayPort, USB-A port x 3, right side (4th).




The back side is secured with four 2.5mm hex screws.




When opening the back side, it looked like this, with the board on the left, the fan in the center, and the 512 GB SSD on the right. Also, you can see that a thick thermal pad for SSD is attached to the back side.




According to Geerling, the board is the Surface Pro X's main board rearranged to fit in the case. In addition, it seems that Realtek's 1 Gbps Ethernet adapter for USB 3.0 'RTL8153BM' and USB 3.1 Gen 2 hub chip 'GL3590' were confirmed.




The 'Windows Development Kit 2023' processor uses ARM64 (AArch64) as its instruction set architecture. Therefore, benchmark tests were conducted with Geekbench along with PCs and Macs equipped with the same ARM64 processor. Dot 1 has a single core of 533 and multicore of 1546, Windows Development Kit 2023 has a single core of 1096 and multicore of 5755, and Mac mini has a single core of 1760 and multicore of 7724. .



'Apple's M1 chip has proven that ARM chips can be a good choice for computing power, but Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 (the processor in the Windows Development Kit 2023) has yet to reach that point,' said Geerling. n” is written.

In addition, the following is a score of peak power consumption during a benchmark test for calculating the multi-core score of the CPU with Geekbench. A higher number indicates higher power efficiency, and here again the Windows Development Kit 2023 is defeated by the M1-equipped Mac mini released in 2020. In addition, the power consumption in the idle state is 5 watts for the Windows Development Kit 2023, and 4 watts for the Mac mini, which is even less.



However, the Windows Development Kit 2023 has a model with 512 GB of storage, which is 99,880 yen including tax, while the Mac mini with M1 is slightly more expensive with a 512 GB storage model of 120,800 yen including tax. In addition, the Windows Development Kit 2023 appeals that it has the advantage of being able to disassemble on its own and replace the SSD. However, since the storage of Windows Development Kit 2023 uses a case of Type 2230 of M.2 SSD with a length of 22 mm and a width of 30 mm, it is necessary to devise a way to replace it with a more general Type 2280 SSD. It looks like it's going to be.



Geerling said, 'The Windows Development Kit 2023 is a robust device suitable for developing Windows applications for Arm, but it is not so useful for Linux. You can run Linux for ARM with WSL , the Windows subsystem for Linux, but Linux distributions cannot be booted natively.'

Geerling said, ``The Windows Development Kit 2023 is a decent device overall, quiet and relatively power efficient, so Microsoft has done a great job of running Windows 11 and their software on ARM. While highly appreciated, ``The question is whether the specs are sufficient to cross-compile native ARM64 software on Windows.''

in Hardware, Posted by logu_ii