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Not really that surprising. Your average laptop nowadays probably has more ARM cores than x86 cores. They're in all kinds of peripherials like wifi controllers,
by ginko 10y ago
Not really that surprising. Your average laptop nowadays probably has more ARM cores than x86 cores. They're in all kinds of peripherials like wifi controllers, power supplies, harddisk controllers, GPU job control, heck even AMD's recent APUs come with an integrated Cortex-A5.[1] ARM cores are everywhere, people just don't know about it.
[1]http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/amd-2013-apus-to-include-arm-cortexa5-processor-for-trustzone-capabilities http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/amd-2013-apus-to-include-...
- walterbell 10y agoWhat is the AMD equivalent of Intel's open-source tboot for trusted execution, to take advantage of ARM TrustZone on an AMD processor?
- userbinator 10y agoLaptops have what is known as an "embedded controller" to handle peripherals like keyboard/touchpad, power management, and fan control. Most of them seem to be low-power 8/16-bit MCUs like 8051 and H8S, but I wouldn't be surprised if newer ones use ARM too. ...and don't forget Intel ME, which is not ARM but another processor in the system.
- aexaey 10y agoMost Chromebooks have embedded controller running on ARM specifically. https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/ec-development https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/ec-development
- StringyBob 10y agoSystem-on-chips (most big chips these days) are so complex they usually have the same thing one level deeper: On chip embedded controllers, often an mcu. You might find that 'one arm chip' has many independent arm cpu cores carrying out different functions mostly completely hidden from end user behind firmware or rom
- makomk 10y agoAmusingly enough, the embedded controller on some of the newer Allwinner ARM SoCs is apparently OpenRISC of all things. Guess it saved them some licensing fees.
- spikengineer 10y agoNew ME is apparently a SPARCv8 core. Older ones were ARC.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dom0 10y agoIntel platforms also had an ARC processor (they approximately cater the same markets as ARM minus mobile) for years in the ME. AMD does the same thing with an ARM core. Practically all peripherals contain at least one programmable processor. Remote management / IPMI also usually works with an entirely separate ARM computer that's integrated with the main computers graphics unit -- basically a shared framebuffer, just in hardware.
- monocasa 10y agoFun fact: ARC derives originally from the SuperFX inside some SNES cartridges like Star Fox.
- D_Guidi 10y agoany source for this? should be an interesting Read
- 0xcde4c3db 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synopsys#ARC_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synopsys#ARC_International
- ayuvar 10y agoIt blows my mind that the Super FX not only survived the collapse of Argonaut but went on to become so widely adopted by companies that presumably could make their own tiny microprocessors. So cool.
- samlittlewood 10y agoARC had been split out into Argonaut Technology Ltd. long before Argonaut Software hit the buffers. The success of the SuperFX chip opened doors for future work, but nothing from the SuperFX was carried over - it was 16 bit, with a compact instruction encoding, a gate level design using ECAD. A string of graphics hardware projects followed with a wide range of requirements, targeting 'interesting' (ie: cheapest) processes/standard cell libraries. These were all VHDL, and a flexible 32 bit embedded risc control processor emerged as a common theme. The configurability and robustness in the face of sketchy ecad toolchains made it a very saleable thing in it's own right.
- agumonkey 10y agoWhenever this topic occurs, I send this in http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1 http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1 Ubiquitous com...fusion.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agohow about your fix all the broken image links in that article instead of repeatedly spamming a broken article. you're all idiots.
- DanBC 10y agoI love that. I had a hard drive that had a firmware fault, and I repaired it using a USB-Serial converter, taking the pcb off the drive to temporarily mask off a connector, and then issuing a couple of commands. http://superuser.com/questions/365999/how-do-i-recover-data-from-my-presumably-dead-hard-disk http://superuser.com/questions/365999/how-do-i-recover-data-... http://superuser.com/questions/365999/how-do-i-recover-data-from-my-presumably-dead-hard-disk http://superuser.com/questions/365999/how-do-i-recover-data-...
- phs318u 10y agoThank you. That is one of the best hacks I've read. Very enjoyable.
- phamilton 10y agoDon't forget that many (if not most) SSDs are dual core ARM chips.
- wtallis 10y agoOften more than just two cores. Samsung's latest PCIe controller increased from three to five ARM cores, and most of their SATA SSD controllers have also been 3-core designs. Phison's mainstream SATA SSD controller has four cores.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Rebelgecko 10y agoHell some (all?) Macbooks even have FPGAs
- wolfgke 10y agoWhat is the FPGA used for?
- stephen_g 10y agoI'm not sure about the FPGAs the parent comment is specifically talking about, but often FPGAs in general purpose devices are used just for glue logic - that is, buffering and interfacing between different types of busses.
- jacquesm 10y agoTo allow for fixes in the field. You can't really repair hardware once it is shipped, but you can reprogram an FPGA to fix a problem in a bunch of logic so it is better to have that logic in an FPGA than to have it hardwired. Don't be surprised if an upgrade to your OS also reprograms that FPGA.
- bartvk 10y agoI was surprised about that and looked for a source. Here it is: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody-Early-2011-Teardown/4990/2#s22468 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody-...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]