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> Not really, at least until end users are buying ARM machines How do you address the problem caused by the combinatorial explosion of adding a whole new ISA t
by geezerjay 7y ago
> Not really, at least until end users are buying ARM machines
How do you address the problem caused by the combinatorial explosion of adding a whole new ISA to the OS*distribution combination of platforms that need to be targetted, tested for, and debugged?
- jchw 7y agoIt’s been largely solved, for Linux distributions. Many of them have supported a wide array of architectures for a long time. This is a pretty theoretical problem and wreaks of slippery slope fallacy. How many CPU architectures have even come close to desktop usability in the past 10 years? Even prospect wise I basically only see ARM and RISC-V on the horizon. A combinatoric explosion is unlikely, very unlikely. I already kind of went over this, but I’ll reiterate: WebAssembly is a good example of a technology that has the potential to kill two birds with one stone and unify both architectures and OSes. Web browsers are Not the only environment WebAssembly runs in. Folks writing software in .NET, Python, Java, JS already don’t have to worry about this. They already aren’t dealing with architectures, mostly. A lot can be done with emulation when performance is not a primary concern. Windows 10 already has x86 emulation for ARM. On Linux Qemu user mode is pretty mature (and is already used for things like setting up ARM chroots on x86 boxes.)