5 ms·

but with smartphones you don't have a choice. so it's different.

deng 8y ago
> but with smartphones you don't have a choice. so it's different. Exactly. Linus' point is that Arm has no real advantage in the server space to compensate for the problems with cross-development. That's completely different for smartphones, which is why Arm won that space.
- pjc50 8y ago
  When Apple replace Intel with ARM in their laptops, that goes away too. (See my argument elsewhere in this thread)
  - pritambaral 8y ago
    The argument isn't "same instruction set". The argument is "same development & deployment environment", by the logic of which the Apple argument fails because not many people deploy to Apple servers.
    - comex 8y ago
      So you run a Linux VM, just as lots of Mac-using developers do today. But the instruction set of the VM has to match the instruction set of the host, unless you’re in the mood for slow emulation.
      - pritambaral 8y ago
        > So you run a Linux VM, just as lots of Mac-using developers do today I hear far more make do with just homebrew. > unless you’re in the mood for slow emulation I run an embedded OS (made for a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 board) on both Real Hardware and on my ThinkPad (via systemd-nspawn & qemu-arm). I found (and confirmed via benchmarks) the latter to be much faster than the former — across all three of compute, memory, and disk access.
  - mattnewport 8y ago
    Apple is a small percentage of the laptop market.
    - MBCook 8y ago
      But their market share with developers is much higher than in the general consumer market.
      - mattnewport 8y ago
        Possibly, it does seem that way for web dev at least. There's plenty of programmers out there (the majority?) not doing web dev and never touching Macs however. In a 20 year game development career I've never had cause to use a Mac for work purposes. Perhaps the share of developers using Macs as their primary development machines exceeds their 10% market share of laptops but I doubt it's a majority.
Tehnix 8y ago
I’m not sure if this is what you were implying, but I don’t know of any x86 processors that can compete with the Arm processors that are in use, on power consumption to performance ratio. Take e.g. Apple’s A12, which compete with their MacBooks in performance, and assuredly draw much less power.
- deng 8y ago
  > I don’t know of any x86 processors that can compete with the Arm processors that are in use, on power consumption to performance ratio Not anymore, but there was a time when x86 was (barely) able to compete in that area and there were some x86-based smartphones and tablets. But it was too little too late: x86 already was a niche. Developers absolute had to support ARM, but x86 was optional, so many apps were not available for x86, and that was pretty much it for those devices.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  "assuredly draw much less power." The Macbook uses a 14nm 4.5W m3 with 1.5 billion transistors. The iPad uses a 7nm 12W A12X with 10 billion transistors.
- kllrnohj 8y ago
  You haven't been paying attention. In order to go faster ARM started using more power. A lot more power. Turns out power usage was never an ARM vs. x86 thing, it was purely a "how fast do you want to go" thing. ARM started at the "very slow" end of the spectrum which made it a good fit for mobile initially since x86 didn't have anything on the "very slow" end of things. By being very slow it was very low power. But then the push to make ARM fast happened, and now ARM is every bit as power hungry as x86 at comparable performance levels. The power cost is for performance. The actual instruction set is a rounding error.
xoa 8y ago
>but with smartphones you don't have a choice. You don't have much choice now sure, but it's not as if there weren't any efforts at x86 smartphones (like the ZenPhone). Nor is it as if there wasn't a long run up of phones leading to the modern smartphone either. And even in this how is not directly relevant to the case of x86? I mean, we're directly doing a comparison to the RISC/MIPS/etc era yeah? Couldn't back then someone say "well but with PC you don't have a choice, so it's different"? x86 got heavy traction on the back of WinTel, then moved up to bigger iron, which didn't really fight hard in the lower end lower margin space. Does there really seem to be no deja vu with that vs ARM gaining heavy traction in iOS/Android/embedded then moving up to PCs and servers, where Intel/AMD didn't really play in the lower end lower margin space? There was a period with plenty of choice in servers, but then x86 won. And again it's not as if someone can't come up with compelling arguments, x86 has some real moats even beyond pure performance. There is enormously more legacy software for x86 for example, and the ISA for it will be under legal protection for a long time to come which complicates running it on ARM. But it's hard to say how much that matters in much of the cloud space, particularly if we're imagining 5-10 years further down the line. x86 takeover didn't happen overnight either, and the first efforts were certainly haphazard. But momentum and sheer volume matter. It just seems like something that needs to be addressed at any rate, more deeply then you have and certainly more then Linus did.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Most legacy software needs an emulator anyway. X86-64 and OS libraries are not sufficiently similar. Try running a Windows 95 era application on Windows 10. You can even have problems with Windows XP era stuff. And server space in general does not do legacy without keeping everything intact. The only real issue is lack of ARM developer PCs.
  - smush 8y ago
    Windows does make a huge attempt to make stuff backwards compatible, however. I run a copy of Cardfile copied from Windows NT4 on Windows 10 just fine.

deng 8y ago

> but with smartphones you don't have a choice. so it's different. Exactly. Linus' point is that Arm has no real advantage in the server space to compensate for the problems with cross-development. That's completely different for smartphones, which is why Arm won that space.

pjc50 8y ago
When Apple replace Intel with ARM in their laptops, that goes away too. (See my argument elsewhere in this thread)
- pritambaral 8y ago
  The argument isn't "same instruction set". The argument is "same development & deployment environment", by the logic of which the Apple argument fails because not many people deploy to Apple servers.
  - comex 8y ago
    So you run a Linux VM, just as lots of Mac-using developers do today. But the instruction set of the VM has to match the instruction set of the host, unless you’re in the mood for slow emulation.
    - pritambaral 8y ago
      > So you run a Linux VM, just as lots of Mac-using developers do today I hear far more make do with just homebrew. > unless you’re in the mood for slow emulation I run an embedded OS (made for a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 board) on both Real Hardware and on my ThinkPad (via systemd-nspawn & qemu-arm). I found (and confirmed via benchmarks) the latter to be much faster than the former — across all three of compute, memory, and disk access.
- mattnewport 8y ago
  Apple is a small percentage of the laptop market.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    But their market share with developers is much higher than in the general consumer market.
    - mattnewport 8y ago
      Possibly, it does seem that way for web dev at least. There's plenty of programmers out there (the majority?) not doing web dev and never touching Macs however. In a 20 year game development career I've never had cause to use a Mac for work purposes. Perhaps the share of developers using Macs as their primary development machines exceeds their 10% market share of laptops but I doubt it's a majority.

Tehnix 8y ago

I’m not sure if this is what you were implying, but I don’t know of any x86 processors that can compete with the Arm processors that are in use, on power consumption to performance ratio. Take e.g. Apple’s A12, which compete with their MacBooks in performance, and assuredly draw much less power.

deng 8y ago
> I don’t know of any x86 processors that can compete with the Arm processors that are in use, on power consumption to performance ratio Not anymore, but there was a time when x86 was (barely) able to compete in that area and there were some x86-based smartphones and tablets. But it was too little too late: x86 already was a niche. Developers absolute had to support ARM, but x86 was optional, so many apps were not available for x86, and that was pretty much it for those devices.
bryanlarsen 8y ago
"assuredly draw much less power." The Macbook uses a 14nm 4.5W m3 with 1.5 billion transistors. The iPad uses a 7nm 12W A12X with 10 billion transistors.
kllrnohj 8y ago
You haven't been paying attention. In order to go faster ARM started using more power. A lot more power. Turns out power usage was never an ARM vs. x86 thing, it was purely a "how fast do you want to go" thing. ARM started at the "very slow" end of the spectrum which made it a good fit for mobile initially since x86 didn't have anything on the "very slow" end of things. By being very slow it was very low power. But then the push to make ARM fast happened, and now ARM is every bit as power hungry as x86 at comparable performance levels. The power cost is for performance. The actual instruction set is a rounding error.

xoa 8y ago

>but with smartphones you don't have a choice. You don't have much choice now sure, but it's not as if there weren't any efforts at x86 smartphones (like the ZenPhone). Nor is it as if there wasn't a long run up of phones leading to the modern smartphone either. And even in this how is not directly relevant to the case of x86? I mean, we're directly doing a comparison to the RISC/MIPS/etc era yeah? Couldn't back then someone say "well but with PC you don't have a choice, so it's different"? x86 got heavy traction on the back of WinTel, then moved up to bigger iron, which didn't really fight hard in the lower end lower margin space. Does there really seem to be no deja vu with that vs ARM gaining heavy traction in iOS/Android/embedded then moving up to PCs and servers, where Intel/AMD didn't really play in the lower end lower margin space? There was a period with plenty of choice in servers, but then x86 won. And again it's not as if someone can't come up with compelling arguments, x86 has some real moats even beyond pure performance. There is enormously more legacy software for x86 for example, and the ISA for it will be under legal protection for a long time to come which complicates running it on ARM. But it's hard to say how much that matters in much of the cloud space, particularly if we're imagining 5-10 years further down the line. x86 takeover didn't happen overnight either, and the first efforts were certainly haphazard. But momentum and sheer volume matter. It just seems like something that needs to be addressed at any rate, more deeply then you have and certainly more then Linus did.

AstralStorm 8y ago
Most legacy software needs an emulator anyway. X86-64 and OS libraries are not sufficiently similar. Try running a Windows 95 era application on Windows 10. You can even have problems with Windows XP era stuff. And server space in general does not do legacy without keeping everything intact. The only real issue is lack of ARM developer PCs.
- smush 8y ago
  Windows does make a huge attempt to make stuff backwards compatible, however. I run a copy of Cardfile copied from Windows NT4 on Windows 10 just fine.