5 ms·

I think Apple would probably just use ARM chips; they already have the license and they have lots of experience designing their own. OpenPOWER is awesome thoug

by PeCaN 11y ago

I think Apple would probably just use ARM chips; they already have the license and they have lots of experience designing their own. OpenPOWER is awesome though. I'm hoping Talos will get enough interest; I'm ready to throw money at them if it succeeds. POWER chips are super good, I don't know how IBM has managed to keep up with Intel's R&D but they're definitely competitive in performance. 1. http://0pf.org/j-core.html http://0pf.org/j-core.html

ryao 11y ago
I doubt Apple would go so far as designing a low volume server processor for their datacenters. It is probably not cost effective. Apple reusing their iDevice SoCs in microservers could work though. The A9 has PCI Express lanes for NVMe flash that could be used to add wired networking and storage while the secure boot and code signing would allow them to build a microserver that only runs their code. This arrangement would also be incredibly cost effective for them. They would want to give their SoCs have properly protected internal data paths and the necessary logic for ECC RAM before using them in micro-servers if those chip features are not already there though. If they are, I doubt that the ECC is being used in their iDevices.
- rdancer 11y ago
  > I doubt Apple would go so far as designing a low volume server processor for their datacenters. It is probably not cost effective. They have the luxury of having enough cash, and enough profitability, to do things that have negative ROI. The recently concluded lawsuit comes to mind — there was no business case for not settling it at the earliest. They didn't settle at all, and took it to the US Supreme Court. And if a secure architecture requires a custom-designed backend server farm, they can do it, and even probably make it revenue-neutral, by re-introducing the Xserve product line. I don't think they will do a full-blown custom design, and the advantage of having their own hardware stack is that they can leverage existing technology, and make a few tweaks. And they must have been running at least designs on this possibility, because they do want to take notebook/desktop processor manufacture in-house in the medium term, and end reliance on Intel.
  - ryao 11y ago
    A secure architecture is possible with IBM POWER. Unless they can save money building their own without hurting iDevice development, there is just no reason to make their own server chips.
  - AlgorithmicTime 11y ago
    I'm not sure I agree that there was no business case. Apple made it clear that they would not cooperate with attempts to recover customer data, which could be an extremely valuable position to hold.
  - exelius 11y ago
    > The recently concluded lawsuit comes to mind — there was no business case for not settling it at the earliest. They didn't settle at all, and took it to the US Supreme Court. I'm inclined to disagree. Apple is a global company, and many of its customers would not look favorably upon the US government being able to force Apple to decrypt their data. I actually think that Apple would have gone as far as to move a good portion of their operations outside the US and create separate legal entities to protect against this had they lost the case. And while globally people tend to have mixed opinions of Americans, the US government and its three-letter agencies are almost universally despised around the world. Apple being seen as a willing cooperator with the US government (especially on the issue of privacy / espionage) would be a huge blow to their global brand.
    - mineshaftgap 11y ago
      >the US government and its three-letter agencies are almost universally despised around the world Except when something goes wrong and then they are expected to bail them out.
    - rdancer 11y ago
      The e-books case. You cannot very well settle an FBI request or subpoena. http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-07/apple-rejected-by-u-s-high-court-in-450-million-e-book-case http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-07/apple-...
- cm2187 11y ago
  I don't know the Apple ecosystem well enough but does apple even have a decent virtualization software stack running on Macs? Or would they just run linux on apple machines?
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    Probably run Linux. Xserve is dead, I don't think Apple uses OS X on servers.
  - madeofpalk 11y ago
    Linux on non-apple machines.
    - ryao 11y ago
      HP machines to be specific. http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/06/06/datacenter-equipment-apple/ http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/06/06/datacenter-equipment-app...
  - m_eiman 11y ago
    They expose a virtualization API that allows this on Mac App Store: http://veertu.com/ http://veertu.com/ Don't know how robust it is compared to e.g. VMWare or VirtualBox, but it seems to be working well enough in my simple tests.
    - shuzchen 11y ago
      That same Hypervisor.framework is also what powers https://github.com/mist64/xhyve https://github.com/mist64/xhyve I was really excited about that project but it doesn't appear to be getting much attention.
  - ryao 11y ago
    iCloud uses Linux according to their job postings.

by PeCaN 11y ago

ryao 11y ago

I doubt Apple would go so far as designing a low volume server processor for their datacenters. It is probably not cost effective. Apple reusing their iDevice SoCs in microservers could work though. The A9 has PCI Express lanes for NVMe flash that could be used to add wired networking and storage while the secure boot and code signing would allow them to build a microserver that only runs their code. This arrangement would also be incredibly cost effective for them. They would want to give their SoCs have properly protected internal data paths and the necessary logic for ECC RAM before using them in micro-servers if those chip features are not already there though. If they are, I doubt that the ECC is being used in their iDevices.

rdancer 11y ago
> I doubt Apple would go so far as designing a low volume server processor for their datacenters. It is probably not cost effective. They have the luxury of having enough cash, and enough profitability, to do things that have negative ROI. The recently concluded lawsuit comes to mind — there was no business case for not settling it at the earliest. They didn't settle at all, and took it to the US Supreme Court. And if a secure architecture requires a custom-designed backend server farm, they can do it, and even probably make it revenue-neutral, by re-introducing the Xserve product line. I don't think they will do a full-blown custom design, and the advantage of having their own hardware stack is that they can leverage existing technology, and make a few tweaks. And they must have been running at least designs on this possibility, because they do want to take notebook/desktop processor manufacture in-house in the medium term, and end reliance on Intel.
- ryao 11y ago
  A secure architecture is possible with IBM POWER. Unless they can save money building their own without hurting iDevice development, there is just no reason to make their own server chips.
- AlgorithmicTime 11y ago
  I'm not sure I agree that there was no business case. Apple made it clear that they would not cooperate with attempts to recover customer data, which could be an extremely valuable position to hold.
- exelius 11y ago
  > The recently concluded lawsuit comes to mind — there was no business case for not settling it at the earliest. They didn't settle at all, and took it to the US Supreme Court. I'm inclined to disagree. Apple is a global company, and many of its customers would not look favorably upon the US government being able to force Apple to decrypt their data. I actually think that Apple would have gone as far as to move a good portion of their operations outside the US and create separate legal entities to protect against this had they lost the case. And while globally people tend to have mixed opinions of Americans, the US government and its three-letter agencies are almost universally despised around the world. Apple being seen as a willing cooperator with the US government (especially on the issue of privacy / espionage) would be a huge blow to their global brand.
  - mineshaftgap 11y ago
    >the US government and its three-letter agencies are almost universally despised around the world Except when something goes wrong and then they are expected to bail them out.
  - rdancer 11y ago
    The e-books case. You cannot very well settle an FBI request or subpoena. http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-07/apple-rejected-by-u-s-high-court-in-450-million-e-book-case http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-07/apple-...
cm2187 11y ago
I don't know the Apple ecosystem well enough but does apple even have a decent virtualization software stack running on Macs? Or would they just run linux on apple machines?
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Probably run Linux. Xserve is dead, I don't think Apple uses OS X on servers.
- madeofpalk 11y ago
  Linux on non-apple machines.
  - ryao 11y ago
    HP machines to be specific. http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/06/06/datacenter-equipment-apple/ http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/06/06/datacenter-equipment-app...
- m_eiman 11y ago
  They expose a virtualization API that allows this on Mac App Store: http://veertu.com/ http://veertu.com/ Don't know how robust it is compared to e.g. VMWare or VirtualBox, but it seems to be working well enough in my simple tests.
  - shuzchen 11y ago
    That same Hypervisor.framework is also what powers https://github.com/mist64/xhyve https://github.com/mist64/xhyve I was really excited about that project but it doesn't appear to be getting much attention.
- ryao 11y ago
  iCloud uses Linux according to their job postings.