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> promise for Linux support that ARM and RISC-V don't necessarily provide uh, ARMv8 and RISC-V were developed with Linux in mind from the beginning, they didn'

> promise for Linux support that ARM and RISC-V don't necessarily provide uh, ARMv8 and RISC-V were developed with Linux in mind from the beginning, they didn't even have anything other than Linux/BSD/various-RTOSes, like IBM did with AIX.

dragontamer 7y ago
That's not the kind of support I'm talking about. Who is writing the RISC-V compiler? If the RISC-V compiler for GCC or CLang messes up, who do you call? If the Power9 GCC / CLang compilers mess up, you call Red Hat for support. Red Hat / IBM are now the same company, so they'll offer end-to-end services. ----------- ARM has okay support: the ARM foundation seems to be taking care of their compiler kits / Linux patches / etc. etc. pretty well. But I don't think you can buy an ARM support package from anybody... really. I think the ARM / Linux ecosystem is still nascent. You get good support through the Rasp. Pi community, and maybe the occasional Android Phone gets a big community around it. But ARM / Linux ecosystem is quite poor outside of Rasp. Pi. ARM, as a company, is clearly designed as an "embedded" company. It provides the documentation and compilers, but doesn't provide too many OS-level services above that.
- floatboth 7y ago
  > If the Power9 GCC / CLang compilers mess up, you call Red Hat for support uh, where and when exactly did they offer that? Actually I don't remember anyone anywhere offering commercial support for GCC or LLVM/clang. Well, I'm not the type of person to look for commercial support for anything ever, but I've heard of several companies that provide support for DBMSes like PostgreSQL. Not so for compilers. I just googled "gcc commercial support" and the results are the GCC FAQ, a mailing list post about it from 2005 (!), GCC on Wikipedia, "Office 365 GCC" (lol) and so on. Looks like it's just not a thing at all.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    Sorry, not GCC / Clang. You're right. But IBM's XL Compiler: https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21110831 https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21110831 ------- I think I confused it with ARM: ARM has a CLang-based compiler with official ARM support IIRC. https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/server-and-hpc https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/server-and-hpc I think the hobbyist (who won't get much support even if they're a paying customer) benefits from free tools / free support / communities. But it seems like a number of professionals prefer having a degree of professional support in the products they use.
  - the_why_of_y 7y ago
    IIRC commercial support for GCC is included with some RHEL and SLES subscriptions (probably all except the lowest-cost "desktop"). Red Hat also has a Developer Toolset product that includes a (more recent) complete native toolchain, and SUSE has a similar SLES 12 Toolchain Module / SLES 15 Development Tools Module. https://developers.redhat.com/products/developertoolset/overview https://developers.redhat.com/products/developertoolset/over... https://www.suse.com/c/suse-linux-essentials-where-are-the-compilers-understanding-the-development-tools-module/ https://www.suse.com/c/suse-linux-essentials-where-are-the-c... I haven't heard of commercial clang support though.
- justincormack 7y ago
  Red Hat supports arm64 and recently joined the Risc-V foundation.

dragontamer 7y ago

That's not the kind of support I'm talking about. Who is writing the RISC-V compiler? If the RISC-V compiler for GCC or CLang messes up, who do you call? If the Power9 GCC / CLang compilers mess up, you call Red Hat for support. Red Hat / IBM are now the same company, so they'll offer end-to-end services. ----------- ARM has okay support: the ARM foundation seems to be taking care of their compiler kits / Linux patches / etc. etc. pretty well. But I don't think you can buy an ARM support package from anybody... really. I think the ARM / Linux ecosystem is still nascent. You get good support through the Rasp. Pi community, and maybe the occasional Android Phone gets a big community around it. But ARM / Linux ecosystem is quite poor outside of Rasp. Pi. ARM, as a company, is clearly designed as an "embedded" company. It provides the documentation and compilers, but doesn't provide too many OS-level services above that.

floatboth 7y ago
> If the Power9 GCC / CLang compilers mess up, you call Red Hat for support uh, where and when exactly did they offer that? Actually I don't remember anyone anywhere offering commercial support for GCC or LLVM/clang. Well, I'm not the type of person to look for commercial support for anything ever, but I've heard of several companies that provide support for DBMSes like PostgreSQL. Not so for compilers. I just googled "gcc commercial support" and the results are the GCC FAQ, a mailing list post about it from 2005 (!), GCC on Wikipedia, "Office 365 GCC" (lol) and so on. Looks like it's just not a thing at all.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  Sorry, not GCC / Clang. You're right. But IBM's XL Compiler: https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21110831 https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21110831 ------- I think I confused it with ARM: ARM has a CLang-based compiler with official ARM support IIRC. https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/server-and-hpc https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/server-and-hpc I think the hobbyist (who won't get much support even if they're a paying customer) benefits from free tools / free support / communities. But it seems like a number of professionals prefer having a degree of professional support in the products they use.
- the_why_of_y 7y ago
  IIRC commercial support for GCC is included with some RHEL and SLES subscriptions (probably all except the lowest-cost "desktop"). Red Hat also has a Developer Toolset product that includes a (more recent) complete native toolchain, and SUSE has a similar SLES 12 Toolchain Module / SLES 15 Development Tools Module. https://developers.redhat.com/products/developertoolset/overview https://developers.redhat.com/products/developertoolset/over... https://www.suse.com/c/suse-linux-essentials-where-are-the-compilers-understanding-the-development-tools-module/ https://www.suse.com/c/suse-linux-essentials-where-are-the-c... I haven't heard of commercial clang support though.
justincormack 7y ago
Red Hat supports arm64 and recently joined the Risc-V foundation.