Linus Torvalds says ARM just doesn't look like beating Intel - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 07:15:49 pm
content: Linus Torvalds believes ARM has little chance of overhauling x86, because the latter has built an open hardware ecosystem that the former just doesn't look like replicating.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/10/linus_torvalds_says_arm_just_doesnt_look_like_beating_intel/

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 08:24:09 pm
content: He is not blaming ARM as architecture, but rather specific implementations. ARM has performance issues as well, but that's not relevant here.And what open hardware we are talking about with all that proprietary stuff (UEIFI) that has been added recently?X86 is more uniform, since there is only one vendor and a number of on-chip peripherals is limited and more or less standard.This can be easily rectified by ARM if they see it as an actual problem. They did it once for MCUs by introducing CMSIS.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 08:34:03 pm
content: Intel have all but given up on mobile platforms.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 08:42:04 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on October 10, 2016, 08:34:03 pmYep. And also, what Linus is really saying is "my life would be so much easier if there was only one ARM device or all of them were exactly the same"Understandable, but not going to happen.

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 08:44:41 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on October 10, 2016, 08:34:03 pmunfortunately...R.I.P. Moorefield R.I.P. SoFIA

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 09:07:20 pm
content: Quote from: ataradov on October 10, 2016, 08:42:04 pmYeah, he got tired of the influx of kernel patches and drivers that he had to slog through, each time a new ARM board appeared. This is why we have the absolutely horrible "Device Tree Overlay" system now.He basically forced a few developers to quickly hack together something. DTO is very much not ideal.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 09:30:05 pm
content: QuoteHe's failing to understand the business aspect of ARM vs. Intel. ARM's core competency is in the microcontroller mkt by a long margin. It may move to the processor (desktop + server) markets but that progression will take time / resource, and they have to consider the potential of Intel using a microcontroller offensive as a defensive move.What's why Linus is a techie and not a business visionary.

author: Macbeth
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 09:43:49 pm
content: Quote from: dannyf on October 10, 2016, 09:30:05 pmBut he makes a killing with his Tech Tips on youtube!(I kid, I kid)

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 09:56:26 pm
content: ARM will never ever replace intel x86 arch... it simply won't happen. what is already happening is that certain activities like reading mails and browsing the web are moved from desktops to mobile devices where ARM is prevalent (and since Intel ditched their mobile platforms ARM is the one and only)... but ARM will never take over the desktops. it simply won't happen because of the software. if there is no windows and office for ARM, then it means there will be no ARM for mainstream desktop. for server market it's the very same... some services might/will move to specialized ARM platform (e.g. WEB hosting could be moved to a massive multi-core ARM platform). but in general... as long as there is no windows servers, ms sql, oracle , SAP and many others for ARM... there will be no significant market share for ARM.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 09:57:54 pm
content: Quote from: rob77 on October 10, 2016, 09:56:26 pmBut that's actually changing with AArch64 and ARMv8.

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 10:09:30 pm
content: Quote from: ataradov on October 10, 2016, 09:57:54 pmserver market is about business, business is about profit... porting existing applications to a new platform is a unnecessary investment which recrudesces profit => won't happen.sorry , today's world is all messed up... tech companies are no tech anymore... they are led by businessman without the slightest clue about tech stuff... nowadays it's all about more and more profit, buzz words.. and stupid decisionstalking about the giants in the industry... and the small companies with new fresh blood will be sooner or later swallowed by the giants because the giants can't innovate so they're buying the small ones in hope if buying innovation.. but right after buying them they kill them by stupid decisions... and that's the reason why there will be no existing software ported to any new platform any soon.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 10:27:51 pm
content: Quotethat's a highly static view of the world today - which is unimportant for this discussion.ARM has demo'd server chips and there are ARM-based server boards out there. Having lived with Xeon for the last 10 or so years, I am more and more convinced that the future of (personal) computing is in those multi-core CPUs where individual cores are reasonably but not terribly fast - so they provide adequate performance on older applications. Such CPUs can take on dynamic load situations - sudden onslaught of multiple tasks running at the same time. This approach provides robustness of performance, unlike single core CPUs or CPUs of low core counts.So if you project 10 - 15 or 20 years down the road, it wouldn't surprise me if ARM or ARM-like architectures become a mainstay on the desktop / server market.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 12:13:23 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on October 10, 2016, 08:42:04 pmRight, and my choice of OS would be much easier if there was only 1 Linux, too.....

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 12:35:32 am
content: Bugger the ARM/Intel thing:Quote

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 12:57:21 am
content: Just some random thoughts.- For starters I'm not convinced Linus is right about anything because he says so and sometimes I get the feeling he should leave because he is holding progress back.- What is open about the PC platform? For starters try and get open source video drivers for decent graphic cards.- I also don't see why ARM should move to the desktop and why the power hungry x86 architecture should move into embedded devices.- What is the problem anyway? Neither ARM or x86 are going to dissapear in the next 20 years because both are bound by the same limitations which come with making chips.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 01:14:51 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 11, 2016, 12:57:21 amHe was on this subject for a very long time, that's why we have Device Tree. He said that again, so "media" picked it up again, since they have nothing useful do to.

author: linux-works
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 01:58:51 am
content: Quote from: G7PSK on October 10, 2016, 08:34:03 pmquite the opposite. they are laying off their pc people and desktop chip people in an attempt to 'follow' the IoT idiots.intel will fail at it, as they seriously do not understand what it takes to play well in the maker and/or iot market. all their attempts are overpriced, overdone and not at all iot or maker friendly.but BK (the ceo, as he's known inside) still thinks that there's a chance for intel in the small systems, mobile and iot market.

author: linux-works
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 02:03:19 am
content: we are seeing ARM take over the browser market since tablets and phones are so common and new purchases are mostly for phones, not pc's anymore.the x86 arch is going to be put into servers and mostly left there. MS is seeing this and that's why their whole push for win10 is 'software as a service' where the end system does not matter (its a thin client; what's old is new again!) and the software all runs in data centers (the 'cloud'). if that's the case, ARM can render html and that crappy junk called ecmascript (lol) just fine. no need for x86 at home anymore once MS has killed off local windows installs.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 05:01:34 am
content: Intel spent too much of there efforts up through about 5 years ago trying to kill off AMD. They pretty much succeeded at that but in the process they did not pay enough attention to the mobile market. But, and it's a huge but, Intel would never be able to get anything close to the margins they make in the PC space unless they were able to do unto ARM as they did to AMD. They are late to that game as they were too focused in fighting the last war.Brian

author: Dago
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 05:11:11 am
content: I wouldn't be surprised if the answer to the "what will happen to the desktop market" -question will be "nothing" for the foreseeable future... Development has almost completely stalled (I am running a 2009 or something Xeon I paid 30 € for, for something like 250 € I could get MAYBE twice as fast new CPU, that is nothing in terms of development in seven years) and desktop and laptop computer sales have dropped a LOT. I don't really see why anyone would be interested in entering or even changing this market. Intel is pretty much the only one who has a stake and an interest in this market but I agree with previous posters that they are not really trying, just repackaging their existing x86 Atom stuff and trying to pass that off, but people are not really buying it because it is a poor compromise in terms of speed/price/power use/technology.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 05:31:17 am
content: I would love to see an open computing platform though, Intel is closed, and the latest revelation about them putting spy tech built into the chip is quite scary. An open source hardware - at the semiconductor level, would be quite something. That would be a HUGE feat though. Especially if all the parties involved could collaborate and stick to a certain set of standards. (good luck with that though - look at how fragmented Linux is, and that's just software, I'm talking about hardware too!)

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 05:44:08 am
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on October 11, 2016, 05:31:17 amThat's what RISC V is. And there is actual silicon being made. But obviously they can't move as fast as Intel does.Here are some recent news on the MCU side of it -http://hackaday.com/2016/10/10/the-journey-toward-a-completely-open-microcontroller/There are also MPU implementations out there, but nothing accessible to regular consumers.

author: StuUK
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 06:53:50 am
content: Quote from: rob77 on October 10, 2016, 10:09:30 pmWhat makes you think they are stupid decisions? Many companies have been bought to kill the disruption to their core market rather than foster them, that's business for ya....

author: DimitriP
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 07:08:01 am
content: QuoteI'l take 4 cores at 4+ GHz and let everyone else with 16 cores @ 2.6 GHz gloat about their benchmark results

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 07:50:22 am
content: Quote from: StuUK on October 11, 2016, 06:53:50 amdecision to "streamline" the workforce in the newly bought company and integrate the new-bought into the rotten structures of the giant is quite stupid and equals to killing the bought innovationand that happens most of the time, i would say always

author: System Error Message
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 12:25:51 pm
content: In the past before intel went into the manycore CPU design the RISC CPU world and also many businesses used the sun sparc CPU. It was capable of handling up to 8 threads per core (intel only does 2) and had 16 core variants with support for many sockets when intel only had dual core CPUs. The platform was certainly interesting and it was used in many mission critical applications as it was much better at number crunching than a multi socket intel xeon coupled with the fact that sun did design high end GPUs specifically for the rendering bit of the application. It was a good platform.What limited it was mainly that only sun solaris will work on it and in some lucky cases debian linux. At one point microsoft did have a version of windows for sparc but only 1 version. What killed it was pretty much a bunch of bad decisions and lack common platforms for it in a world where people's choices were either microsoft or linux (not unix). At that time OSX hasnt even come out yet, it was stlll the macintosh. The hardware themselves also werent cheap, as x86 became a more cost effective platform.ARM is still expanding and its actually starting to replace the x86 platform. the cost of an ARM vs intel based chrome laptop for instance while providing all the same functionality. I wouldnt count out the performance of ARM just yet, unlike the x86 ARM doesnt include many hardware units that x86 does to accelerate some tasks (like AES) but more and more ARM platforms are coming up with these units so the gap is closing.ARM will never replace x86 in the desktop world as ARM isnt a big CPU like intel, it lacks many PCIe lanes, bus bandwidths and so on. What i've seen is that less and less people are having desktops, using laptops, more on portability and lower price as it can perform the same tasks. But ARM is starting to replace x86 as the main platform in the house.The other thing about the RISC platform is that unlike with x86 it shows a clear distinction between good and bad coders show. Being good at coding i can make my apps run well on ARM CPUs that are so slow that they can only operate android on the basic level so i dont need them to clock up but also take advantage of faster hardware when it is available.

author: rollatorwieltje
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 12:36:33 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 11, 2016, 12:57:21 amI'm not entirely sure, but I suspect he isn't pleased with how ARM platforms are designed. If you look at an x86 machine, all the bootstrapping and hardware configuration stuff is done by the platform itself. On ARM platforms this isn't really the case, you often have to rely on closed binary blobs in your own software to do this. On x86 it's a closed binary blob as well, but it's on the platform itself (i.e. BIOS chip), so it's less of a concern. The entry point for your own software is always the same, doesn't matter who made the machine.Just look at how annoying it is to run a random OS on an ARM platform. You always need a kernel specifically configured for that device. It's starting to improve with DeviceTree, but it's still far from perfect. On x86 that's not a concern, grab a Windows or Linux disk and it will install and run on every random machine.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 01:12:03 pm
content: "On x86 it's a closed binary blob as well, but it's on the platform itself (i.e. BIOS chip), so it's less of a concern."So you think he is blaming the cpu for the lack of an uniform bios for the CPU?Then he couldn't have been more irrational.

author: rollatorwieltje
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 01:35:38 pm
content: Quote from: dannyf on October 11, 2016, 01:12:03 pmHe doesn't, look at his quotes. He even mentions the problem is not the CPU core or the instruction set.QuoteAlso he is doing the interview with someone from Linaro, an organisation that attempts to standardize ARM platforms. DeviceTree is part of the solution. DeviceTree.org was started by Linaro.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 04:33:08 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 11, 2016, 12:57:21 amLinux made a lot of progress and is now the most used OS in the world thanks to people like Torvalds.If somebody or a company thinks they can do better, they are free to fork Linux and add their improvements.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 06:08:12 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on October 11, 2016, 04:33:08 pmIn the beginning yes but now it seems to have stalled mostly due to never ending backward incompatibilities which (for starters) prevents hardware manufacturers to create drivers. In companies it is rare to see the founder growing a the business into a large company because running a small company takes totally different skills than running a multi-million dollar firm. Same with Linux. Linus did great with starting it but the best thing he could do for Linux right now is leave it alone so others can take it to the next level.

author: R005T3r
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 06:11:10 pm
content: The real stupid thing about IoT is that they should have put Security as their top priority.They didn't. As a result anyone with a bit of skill can hack the damn thing and when it's in it, it's compromised. No matter what.Just think about the whole idea to have a pacemaker with security flaws: anyone can kill you.

author: System Error Message
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 06:24:16 pm
content: This is a different Linus as the Linus in LTT used to be a sales person for PCs not programming/development for linux.To sum it up, ARM will never beat x86 (not intel as theres AMD and VIA too), not in the direct sense of the tasks that x86 will continue to perform but ARM will beat x86 in common usage. Infact even russia is throwing out x86 and going with ARM because they can design their own, make their own and use their own software (the open source thing for security).IoT is not relevant as plenty also use intel's low power CPU. You can find raspberry pi compatible boards that use quad core atoms. To me IoT as a concept is flawed because of the dependence of connectivity with the outside world rather than with the network created by user.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 06:26:02 pm
content: Quote from: dannyf on October 10, 2016, 10:27:51 pmAnd you have just touched on the problem Linus identified. It is not x86 versus ARM. It is one x86 standard versus many ARM standards which are taking x86 on individually.When x86 took over the RISC workstation and server markets from below, x86 was larger than any individual RISC system.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 06:43:59 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 11, 2016, 06:08:12 pmStalled? You must be kidding, right? Linux development, and specially driver development is growing and better than ever.Quote from: nctnico on October 11, 2016, 06:08:12 pmThose are your arguments? Really?Like I said, everybody is free to fork Linux and take it to the next level but that's not happeningbecause "the watchers always know better than the doers".

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 07:00:38 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on October 11, 2016, 06:26:02 pmExactly this.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 07:04:09 pm
content: Quote from: R005T3r on October 11, 2016, 06:11:10 pmThis plus the fact that all those IoT gadgets will not receive any updates after a two years (if any!) and you have the recipe for failure/disaster.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2016, 10:51:33 pm
content: Quote from: System Error Message on October 11, 2016, 12:25:51 pmI wouldn't be surprised if we saw an ARM based laptop running OS X from Apple in the next few years. Sell it for ~$600. They've got the software infrastructure in place to do it; basically they could flip a switch in Xcode and have it produce x64/ARM64 fat binaries. I bet most existing applications on the Mac App Store would require little to no code modifications for it to work.For 90% of the people that use a computer, it would fit their needs perfectly.

author: System Error Message
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2016, 04:06:09 am
content: There may be many implementations for ARM but they all share the same instruction set. The problem is that you have to optimise for specific processor.With ARM good and bad coders are revealed.What made people move from sparc to x86 was simply to do with cost as sparc was way ahead of x86 sold only in the server segment for critical applications after microsoft stopped supporting it as many people were using it on their desktops. The sparc CPU is a big chip despite being RISC architecture but they gave more than what intel could at that time even in workstations from the 64 bit architecture, 64 bit PCI, lots of registered memory slots, FCAL (this was before sata).

author: R005T3r
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2016, 07:10:30 am
content: Quote from: Karel on October 11, 2016, 07:04:09 pmThe recipe to disaster? I'm shocked that they permit to make medical equipment with it! Imagine a pacemaker with IoT: someone can kill you by sitting on a desk and writing a few commands...

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2016, 09:38:50 am
content: Quote from: Karel on October 11, 2016, 07:04:09 pmJust take all the security issues with SOHO routers (D-Link, Netgear and so on) in the last few years and multiply them by 10 or 20. And IoT has just started. In three years the factor will be maybe 1000. The big DDoS attacks we've seen recently are mostly driven by IoT and SOHO routers. The largest one was about 1.1 TBit/s (directly, no amplification), and speculations are that the IoT bot net could create 2 TBit/s direct traffic. This is scary!

author: 3db
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2016, 10:02:24 am
content: Quote from: rob77 on October 10, 2016, 09:56:26 pmThey HAVE market share of the tablet/phone market.It's the desktop market that's in decline.3DB

author: System Error Message
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2016, 02:32:38 pm
content: Quote from: R005T3r on October 12, 2016, 07:10:30 amIn that case full steam ahead with IoT, than i can kill however i want easilyThe problem with IoT is the way people design and monetise it. There are many existing things that are constantly being developed and secure that allow for proper checking and for security. Perhaps i should make my own IoT just to prove it.

author: linux-works
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2016, 04:04:24 am
content: I contracted at cisco for a while and did some work for an IoT group.I asked the same kinds of questions: what is your security 'story'?(crickets chirping is heard)they didn't have an answer for me. they didn't even care. and the more I asked, the more I was ignored.if big old cisco doesn't give a damn, no one else will, very likely.IoT is doomed. in a way, its a good thing its doomed. its mostly about marketing stealing your info and phone-home attempts. WAN access for IoT seems like a failure anyway; and its mostly companies that want this, not us users. for me, I'd prefer ALL my IoT things sit on my lan and NEVER reach out to a public network for any reason. home automation does not need remote access; not really.'

author: BobC
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 24, 2016, 04:58:13 am
content: I have two $99 10" tablets with 720p displays and 4GB RAM. One is quad-core ARM+Linux (well, rooted Android), the other is dual-core x86+Win10. Both are 32-bit only, and both run Chrome.The ARM tablet is noticeably faster when web browsing. The only thing the x86 does better is video playback, but only by a tiny bit. I don't play games, so I haven't tested that.I believe the only reason the x86 tablet even exists is to run Win10: It was purely a software decision, a marketing decision, not an engineering decision. If full Win10 ran on ARM, the x86 tablet wouldn't exist (but there would be two ARM tablets, one running Linux/Android, and one running Win10).The goal in personal systems is to get the most computing done per watt. Fewer watts means I can reduce or eliminate heatsinks, simplify power supplies, reduce size, reduce cost, and the list goes on. It ripples through to more bang for the buck for the entire system. ARM not only delivers more computing per watt, it also delivers more computing per dollar.In the near future I believe Intel will only rule when installed in large boxes (high-end desktops, server racks) where only the large scale will let them prevail on the basis of compute power per watt. Everything with a battery will soon be all ARM.Why? Early next year MS will have an ARM Win10 Mobile release with x86 emulation. Assuming that goes well, I would not be at all surprised to see a full desktop Win10 release for Aarch64. With much of .NET officially supported on x86 Linux, and with .NET Core already on ARM, I believe a full ARM build of .NET is simply waiting for release. The path exists and is being traveled.Personal use of x86 will die as MS support for ARM grows. When x86 is no longer the exclusive Win10 desktop target, Intel will have no hardware leg to stand on in the commodity personal space. All that will be left for Intel will be the high-end desktop space and the cloud.To hell with you, Torvalds. What you should worry about is losing Linux installations when full Win10 comes to ARM!

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2016, 09:34:03 am
content: Quote from: BobC on November 24, 2016, 04:58:13 amMost x86 win10 tablets exists because Intel supplied the SoC for less than zero dollars, and Microsoft supplied licenses for free. Once the crazy subsidies which brought this about stopped, the manufacture of most x86 tablets also stopped. Most of the x86 tablets actually dual boot - Win 8.1 or 10 and Android. I think most people use them as Android tablets.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2016, 12:42:28 pm
content: Quote from: linux-works on November 24, 2016, 04:04:24 amThat's disturbing, but I'm not really surprised. On some of their SOHO products (like the SPA VoIP ATA series) you can't enable https because it wouldn't work with any modern browser (firmware 1.3.5 from mid of last year). It's cheap stuff, and IosT (s for shitty) has to be cheap too. In case of Cisco it poorly reflects on their brand.Quote from: linux-works on November 24, 2016, 04:04:24 amI'm not sure about average Joe. Take PC gaming for example. Users are buying games which don't run without an online gaming platform. When the publisher shuts down that platform for whatever reason the game is worthless. It's the same for any cloud based IoT device, also creating tons of e-junk. Unfortunately most people don't see this.Edit: The DHS gets involved:https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161122/08025036105/homeland-security-issues-strategic-principles-securing-internet-broken-things.shtml

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2016, 01:20:20 pm
content: Quote from: timb on October 11, 2016, 10:51:33 pmApple have long unified the code base of macOS and iOS - they just need to ship an ipsw file for iPad Pro with a full installation of OS X in it, and ship a new release of Xcode enabling the existing aarch64 toolchain on macOS SDK, and you get an ARM-based laptop running OS X in the existing iPad Pro hardware, and app developers will get the apps ready in about an hours of time.And you got it right about the code - it is one recompile away from universal compatibility. Apple have done quite a good job at keeping the software layers coherent across different hardware platforms so far, so it is pretty much that as long as you keep clear of lower layers of IOKit, the code is identical across all platforms.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2016, 02:26:37 pm
content: Quote from: madires on November 24, 2016, 12:42:28 pmThey are not the only ones. Last week I've read an article that some Dutch politicians are saying IoT devices should pass a security test before being allowed on the market.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2016, 05:58:23 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on November 24, 2016, 02:26:37 pmI agree. Do they know what kind of test? Because the same can be applied to OSes and other stuff too. How did we not think about that ourselves? Clearly Dutch politicians are smart dudes.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2016, 12:48:15 am
content: Quote from: technix on November 24, 2016, 01:20:20 pmI would enjoy watching them try this. There are enough low level differences like page size between x86 and Apple's implementation of 64 bit ARM to cause major performance problems if not outright failure and Apple's proclivity to lower amounts of system memory will make this worse.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2016, 02:50:02 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on November 25, 2016, 12:48:15 amFor an app developer all those low level differences are masked. In fact the developers are strongly advised not to perform low-level access and always go through their API, and any app that requires low level access are long banned from the App Store. So as long as Apple can make sure that their API doesn't suffer from those differences, 99% of the apps are not going to be affected.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2016, 04:02:57 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on October 11, 2016, 08:28:43 amWhich is, coincidentally, pretty much what the Intel microcode does. The x86 instructions are basically "emulated" already.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2016, 05:06:53 pm
content: Quote from: technix on November 25, 2016, 02:50:02 pmDid I say low level access? I was referring to low level differences. MMAP and memory allocation are impacted by the page size.Unless you mean that Apple discourages anything involving memory allocation. That would be fun also.99% of applications may not be affected, and I think that is optimistic, but the 1% which are will be unusably slow. Keep in mind that we are discussing desktop applications running on ARM64 and this problem will exist even without emulation.There is adiscussion threadover on RWT about this issue with Apple's design choices.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2016, 06:22:10 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on November 25, 2016, 05:06:53 pmOn iOS you are not even supposed to call malloc(3) or mmap(2) directly. You should create objects instead for local storage, and there is absolutely nobody you can IPC with through shared memory.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2016, 07:44:35 pm
content: Quote from: technix on November 25, 2016, 06:22:10 pmWere we discussing iOS? I thought this was about OSx and desktop applications on ARM64.Quote from: technix on November 24, 2016, 01:20:20 pmThis just makes the discussion I linked to more relevant if Apple's operating systems are as screwed up as Linus suggests. One of the posts discusses performance loss between 1 and 2 orders of magnitude (!) just because of the page size problem and how the TLBs are handled.Can Apple leverage OSx on ARM64 to replace x86 when their laptop and desktop market is such a small part of their business? Would this even make sense?Historically the companies which have tried to do what Apple may attempt failed at it miserably because of performance problems. DEC Alpha looked fine on benchmarks until real applications used real memory. I think IBM had the same problem at least once and did not manage to solve it.And on the hardware side there is still no ARM64 (or ARM32) system standard so it is not ARM64 (or ARM32) versus x86; it is Apple's ARM64 versus x86 so there is no economy of scale or network effects to take advantage of.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2016, 12:07:31 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on November 25, 2016, 07:44:35 pmI dunno, Apple seamlessly switched from m68k to PPC to x86 to x64 already, so... They certainly have the track record!In fact, I guarantee you Apple has had macOS running or ARM for *at least* the last 5 years. (Apple secretly had Mac OS X 10.0 to 10.4 running on Intel, so they could easily switch if IBM couldn't follow through with performance commitments. This ended up being a very good decision.)Right now you can use the same code base to target iOS and macOS (obviously each platform will use different UI and input code). So, there should be no reason why, if Apple releases macOS for the iPad Pro, that Xcode couldn't push out a fat binary that targets both ARM64 and x64. Hell, I could even see them resurrecting Rosetta to do binary translation so you can run existing x64 apps!If anyone could pull this off, it's Apple.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2016, 02:41:30 am
content: Quote from: timb on November 26, 2016, 12:07:31 amI will stipulate all of the above but performance was never a reason to switch to or stay with Apple. They were always competing for only their own users.QuoteMore likely if anybody could screw up making Apple ARM64 the new desktop and server standard, it is Microsoft. And then Linux would have to drop the ball as well.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 28, 2016, 01:50:59 pm
content: Quote from: timb on October 11, 2016, 10:51:33 pmThe reverse (cross-compiling iOS apps for Intel) is already commonplace: the iOS Simulator in Xcode isn't an ARM emulator, it's actually a host for native x64 code. Xcode actually compiles an Intel binary which runs natively on the Mac's Intel CPU. I'm not a developer at all, but my understanding is that this is highly effective for almost all testing except for performance profiling, which of course has to happen on an actual hardware iOS device.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 28, 2016, 03:24:09 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on November 28, 2016, 01:50:59 pmApple have written clearly in their documentation that when running iOS apps in the simulator, for any libraries that is common between the two platforms the macOS version is used in place of an iOS version recompiled targeting macOS kernel. I doubt that Apple would bother maintaining two separate code bases of the same library, as the bulk of the code is written in architecture-agnostic high-level language, and the few spots that are platform-dependent are conditionally compiled in the same source file.If the information extracted through jailbreaks have told me anything, Apple have long unified the code base for macOS on desktop platform, iOS on mobile platform, tvOS for set top boxes, watchOS for wearables, and the embeddedOS running in MacBook Pro Touch Pads and Lightning video output peripherals. There isn't 5 separate operating systems, those are a single, unified Darwin operating system packaged with different libraries and sold under different brand names.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 30, 2016, 01:54:57 pm
content: Absolutely. Of course, those libraries make up the vast majority of what we consider "an operating system" these days. But there's no question that Apple has been bringing many of those libraries closer and closer together under the hood, mostly in the direction of bringing more efficient libraries from iOS to macOS.For sure, this is a great tribute to the modularity of Unix, that a single kernel can form the foundation of so many systems running on such disparate hardware over the years. (Just Darwin specifically was born on m68k, then moved to x86 and 32-bit PPC, then 64-bit PPC, then x64, then 32-bit ARM, then 64-bit ARM as timb already said.)What I've always found impressive about the Mac and its architecture migrations is how a single install runs on multiple architectures. Sure, fat binaries aren't difficult in concept, but no other vendor seems to have actually made it work in practice. To this day, my Mac Pro (Xeon tower) is actually running an OS install (of macOS Sierra, 10.11) that dates back to a 2003 PowerBook G4 originally running Mac OS X 10.2, migrated via disk cloning from a machine that wasn't even the same CPU architecture! That is, I've never done a clean install or "system migration", just performed in-place OS upgrades. The upgrade to 10.5 made it a Universal Binary (PPC/x86) that could simply be cloned to the Mac Pro. Later versions stripped out the PPC code and moved everything to x64.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 30, 2016, 04:20:02 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on November 30, 2016, 01:54:57 pmI have a single library code base written in Objective-C, originally intended for iOS, that passed the unit tests targeting macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS at the same time. The library code contained some pretty deep runtime manipulation, but no conditional compiling.Efficiency is very good across all platforms, even on a heavily loaded iPhone 4S.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 12:00:12 am
content: Quote from: tooki on November 30, 2016, 01:54:57 pmExactly. Glad to see that others get this as well! Apple really does have a fine software team that, for the most part, knows what the hell they're doing.People love to shit on Apple, and yes they've got their problems (what company doesn't), but I think they've got the best combination of hardware and software on the market right now.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 01:18:33 am
content: Indeed. In a way, Apple just sells software, which happens to require a laptop or phone shaped dongle!

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 07:24:54 am
content: Quote from: tooki on December 01, 2016, 01:18:33 amMaybe not... Ever heard of Unibeast? It is just too sad that Apple don't have a passable AMD graphics driver. Before I upgraded the graphics to R9 380 on my workstation (had a GTX 650 Ti) I was running OS X on it too.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 09:25:23 am
content: Stop comparing with Apple. Apple developers have by far the easiest job around when it comes to compatibility. They're all in one building deciding howtheirsoftware runs ontheirhardware.Linux has the added difficulty that there are hundreds of different platform variants around it should be compatible with. With many to come in the future.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 09:50:24 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on November 24, 2016, 02:26:37 pmYet the internet is allowed to remain retarded by design?We need a new internet, with sane ISPs who promise (with punishments upto and including expulsion) to use due diligence in using best practices (ie. ingress/egress filtering) and to knock DoS originators off the net. A spamming IoT device should be easily identifiable and kicked off the internet through an automated process.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 10:00:28 am
content: Quote from: Marco on December 01, 2016, 09:50:24 amThat will be fun; so the internet itself will have automated DoS capability built in. Instead of saturating a system with incoming traffic, get the system to generate outgoing traffic which triggers the automated process to block it.This idea is right up there with allowing incoming traffic to rewrite your firewall rules.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 12:16:49 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on December 01, 2016, 09:50:24 amAnd cutting off internet to -for example- an entire hospital?You are seeing these kind of problems already with blacklisting e-mail hosts where one out of a million customers could cause the entire ISP to become blocked. Luckily it seems less and less people are using the e-mail blacklist services because in the end it does more harm than good.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 12:29:13 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on December 01, 2016, 09:50:24 amFor every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 01:08:32 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on December 01, 2016, 12:16:49 pmYou can always sell them a high uptime contract with a 100K$ fine for fucking up.Allowances can be made in the new internet TOS ... it's just a question of providing incentives for not being a moron.At the moment there is no risk for poor security, even ISPs are allowed to just go on the bloody internet without proper egress filtering without penalty. It's insanity.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 01:35:14 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on December 01, 2016, 01:08:32 pmThis is now pure evil. Living in China the government cutting off access to various sites is already frustrating enough.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 06:09:25 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on December 01, 2016, 01:08:32 pmWould those be the same incentives which convince ISPs to use egress filtering? They have sure been a success so far. Egress filtering is trivial and they cannot even do that successfully.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 07:46:38 pm
content: No, as I said there are no incentives.The backbones don't really care, DDOS traffic is as profitable as normal traffic to them. The ISPs don't care, because they don't get punished for being morons. The customers don't care, because they don't get punished for being morons. Except in the tragedy of the commons sense, where we all get punished for not punishing morons.The Internet needs something similar to the Certificate Authority industry in ensuring due diligence, as broken as the CA industry is is at least there is some stick to beat the worst of the worst with.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2016, 08:38:32 pm
content: Quote from: Jeroen3 on December 01, 2016, 09:25:23 amApple also does not compete in markets where performance of large applications matter; they only have to optimize at most for small applications. In this respect, iOS and OSx are toy operating systems and this is reflected in Apple's retreat from servers and high end desktop and portable computers which I can hardly blame them for; most of their sales and profits comes from iOS anyway.In OS X and in earlier versions of iOS, the size of a page is 4 kilobytes. In later versions of iOS, A7- and A8-based systems expose 16-kilobyte pages to the 64-bit userspace backed by 4-kilobyte physical pages, while A9 systems expose 16-kilobyte pages backed by 16-kilobyte physical pages.https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/ManagingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.htmlThat will make for great fun porting OSx and OSx applications to A9 or later. Now I question if Apple does have OSx running on A9 or later hardware.The page size problem is not insurmountable but it is problematical enough for performance and memory requirements to place a premium on not increasing it. It would look bad if the same large application was either an order of magnitude or more slower or took several times as much memory (and was still slower) on ARM than on x86.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 02, 2016, 07:28:49 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on December 01, 2016, 08:38:32 pmSince they figured out how to back 16kB pages with 4kB hardware pages, there is no reason to doubt if they would port the same memory management system to macOS along with the same 16kB-optimized libraries. As I have said before, all Apple's operating system brands share the same codebase, and they would bother leaving out globally-applicable optimizations even though introduced in a different platform.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2016, 11:38:47 am
content: Quote from: technix on December 01, 2016, 07:24:54 amSee that smiley I used in my comment? It matters. Youcompletelymissed the point…Quote from: technix on December 01, 2016, 07:24:54 amNot passable? Meaning what? Apple's graphics drivers are rock-solid (Steam reported that Mac users had only 5% as many crashes as Windows), and support pro 3D apps without special, expensive "pro" drivers like on Windows. I run an AMD HD 7970 (same as R9 280x) on my Mac Pro now, and it's not even flashed with Mac firmware.Quote from: David Hess on December 01, 2016, 08:38:32 pmDefine "large". Apple doesn't do classic DB and server stuff, but their pro media apps certainly are "large" by most definitions. Designing software to manage thousands of photoswithout laggingis not easy. Designing software to edit videowithout renderingis not easy (Apple accomplished thatyearsbefore everyone else). No, Apple doesn't focus on the server. They focus on UI performance, which is a very different skill set, and one which others mostly struggle with.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2016, 02:31:20 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on December 04, 2016, 11:38:47 amThese include applications which demand a lot of the virtual memory system. Compiling large applications is a good example.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2016, 04:47:09 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on December 04, 2016, 11:38:47 amYou are using a GCN 1.1 card. When talking about GCN 1.2 it is a whole another story. Check the forums and you will find out, or try put aR9 380onto your system and boot it. For nVidia card you are almost always guaranteed to boot for at least once, and this gives you time to install the vendor-provided driver package.