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> I think Apple should be thanking the Raspberry Pi world for showing what you can do with SoCs, and for driving so much software to already be ported to the AR

> I think Apple should be thanking the Raspberry Pi world for showing what you can do with SoCs, and for driving so much software to already be ported to the ARM processor. With all due respect, I love my raspberry pi, but Apple just needs to thank whoever was in charge of acquiring PA Semi’s know how in 2008, along with the chip mastermind that is Johni Srouji. Or themselves from 1990, when they actually founded ARM as a joint venture with Acorn computers to make chips for the Newton.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago
Before the Pi ... The first ARM-based device for Linux that I remember getting big was the Sheevaplug. It was an ARM-based "plug computer" with an SD card slot, a USB port IIRC, serial/JTAG port, Ethernet, Wifi, and no display. I had its next generation, the Guruplug, which had 2 Ethernet ports, Bluetooth, and a couple USB ports. Used it as a router for a few years. I don't know how long Debian's arm distro was around before then but that was my goto for the Guruplug. Worked great.
- jay-anderson 6y ago
  I still have my sheevaplug. It was great to have a small self-contained computer at the time. The raspberry pi definitely fills that spot today, but it isn't a full self-contained package like the sheevaplug was (for the pi you need to figure out the case and power).
  - holri 6y ago
    There is Olimex homer server: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/Home-Server/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/Home-Server/open-s... Fully contained package for a small home server, Free Hardware Design, SATA
- GloriousKoji 6y ago
  Although not an ARM device, the old Linksys Wrt54G (2002) was the first device to really get hackers interested and building a community around embedded Linux computing. There were other things but it was really the only one that was affordable and network connected. Later on the Linksys NSLU2 (2004, a network USB hard drive adapter) came out and was the first ARM based "computer" to really catch on. The custom firmware and optware offered a pretty good posix experience. It wasn't until 2008 when debian support came out, give the world a fully modern Linux experience on a little embedded device. After that companies started seeing a niche market and programmers accepted the challenge of installing linux on everything and we got things like the Sheeva Plug and BeagleBoard. A few years later the Raspberry Pi came out with an unbeatable price and community support. And then a decade later we're getting hints of the possibility of ARM computers with true workstation level of computing power.
centimeter 6y ago
Also, the Raspberry Pi is based on possibly the shittiest family of SoCs available on the market. As an embedded engineer, it's hard to overstate how bad the BCM283* series is. Peripherals locked to GPU clock. Why!? Watchdog timer is straight up broken. How do you mess that up?
- sho_hn 6y ago
  Which SBC do you like, from that vantage point?
  - centimeter 6y ago
    Different class than raspi (about 3x the cost all told), but the APU2 from PCEngines is awesome! Multi core amd64 processor, 3-4 gigabit NICs, up to 4GB ECC RAM. In the same class as the raspi, I prefer the BeagleBoard family.
- floatboth 6y ago
  At least the new generation SoC that's in the Pi 4 FINALLY FINALLY uses a GIC instead of a Broadcrap custom interrupt controller. Now EDK2 firmware can present it as a reasonable almost-SBSA-ish ACPI system :) But of course it's still a bit weird. For example, XHCI (due to being attached through a bad PCIe host controller) can only DMA to the lower 3GB of memory. In FreeBSD, we've never had to implement DMA limits for ACPI devices, because no real system had this kind of limitation before, and now I've had to write this: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D25219 https://reviews.freebsd.org/D25219
Matthias247 6y ago
Yes, the raspberry pi is more of a biproduct of the world having moved towards ARM before than a driver by itself. In the end it's just reusing an SoC which was developed for other applications. And we had countless applications in mobile phones and automotive infotainment systems for Cortex A series CPUs and other embedded systems for Cortex M series CPUs before.
FPGAhacker 6y ago
> Apple just needs to thank whoever was in charge of acquiring PA Semi’s know how in 2008 Jim Keller as much as anyone I would think.
gigatexal 6y ago
Yes, the chip team at Apple is likely worth tens of billions on their own. Think about how many companies out there that would pay top dollar to have the chip performance that Apple does. I know the ARM ISA != Intel's X86 but on a perf v perf basis if Apple-level-performance CPUs were available to the mass market Intel would be in a world of hurt and would likely have to drop prices even more aggressively than it does when AMD puts out a competent chip.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > if Apple-level-performance CPUs were available to the mass market Intel would be in a world of hurt Amazon are betting on this on the server side. They've developed a number of ARM-powered EC2 instance types: A1, M6g, C6g, and R6g. They haven't yet made a burstable ARM instance type.
  - gpderetta 6y ago
    Amazon doesn't have access to Apple CPUs, although ARM own designs have finally become quite reasonable for server workloads (and thats what Amazon is using)
    - gigatexal 6y ago
      right, and I don't think the above person was insinuating as much just that a company with large enough pockets like Amazon could take the ARM ISA and do what Apple did and make their own custom silicon for their own purposes. Or at least, that's what I hope they are doing.
      - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        Right, I hadn't meant to imply that Amazon are licensing Apple's ARM chips. I quoted Apple-level-performance CPUs after all, not Apple's CPUs. As you both rightly say, the ARM CPUs Amazon are using are not the same as Apple's. Instead, they are custom built for Amazon. [0][1] [0] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-ec2-instances-a1-powered-by-arm-based-aws-graviton-processors/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-ec2-instances-a1-powere... [1] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcing-new-amazon-ec2-m6g-c6g-and-r6g-instances-powered-by-next-generation-arm-based-aws-graviton2-processors/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcin...

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

Before the Pi ... The first ARM-based device for Linux that I remember getting big was the Sheevaplug. It was an ARM-based "plug computer" with an SD card slot, a USB port IIRC, serial/JTAG port, Ethernet, Wifi, and no display. I had its next generation, the Guruplug, which had 2 Ethernet ports, Bluetooth, and a couple USB ports. Used it as a router for a few years. I don't know how long Debian's arm distro was around before then but that was my goto for the Guruplug. Worked great.

jay-anderson 6y ago
I still have my sheevaplug. It was great to have a small self-contained computer at the time. The raspberry pi definitely fills that spot today, but it isn't a full self-contained package like the sheevaplug was (for the pi you need to figure out the case and power).
- holri 6y ago
  There is Olimex homer server: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/Home-Server/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/Home-Server/open-s... Fully contained package for a small home server, Free Hardware Design, SATA
GloriousKoji 6y ago
Although not an ARM device, the old Linksys Wrt54G (2002) was the first device to really get hackers interested and building a community around embedded Linux computing. There were other things but it was really the only one that was affordable and network connected. Later on the Linksys NSLU2 (2004, a network USB hard drive adapter) came out and was the first ARM based "computer" to really catch on. The custom firmware and optware offered a pretty good posix experience. It wasn't until 2008 when debian support came out, give the world a fully modern Linux experience on a little embedded device. After that companies started seeing a niche market and programmers accepted the challenge of installing linux on everything and we got things like the Sheeva Plug and BeagleBoard. A few years later the Raspberry Pi came out with an unbeatable price and community support. And then a decade later we're getting hints of the possibility of ARM computers with true workstation level of computing power.

centimeter 6y ago

Also, the Raspberry Pi is based on possibly the shittiest family of SoCs available on the market. As an embedded engineer, it's hard to overstate how bad the BCM283* series is. Peripherals locked to GPU clock. Why!? Watchdog timer is straight up broken. How do you mess that up?

sho_hn 6y ago
Which SBC do you like, from that vantage point?
- centimeter 6y ago
  Different class than raspi (about 3x the cost all told), but the APU2 from PCEngines is awesome! Multi core amd64 processor, 3-4 gigabit NICs, up to 4GB ECC RAM. In the same class as the raspi, I prefer the BeagleBoard family.
floatboth 6y ago
At least the new generation SoC that's in the Pi 4 FINALLY FINALLY uses a GIC instead of a Broadcrap custom interrupt controller. Now EDK2 firmware can present it as a reasonable almost-SBSA-ish ACPI system :) But of course it's still a bit weird. For example, XHCI (due to being attached through a bad PCIe host controller) can only DMA to the lower 3GB of memory. In FreeBSD, we've never had to implement DMA limits for ACPI devices, because no real system had this kind of limitation before, and now I've had to write this: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D25219 https://reviews.freebsd.org/D25219

Matthias247 6y ago

Yes, the raspberry pi is more of a biproduct of the world having moved towards ARM before than a driver by itself. In the end it's just reusing an SoC which was developed for other applications. And we had countless applications in mobile phones and automotive infotainment systems for Cortex A series CPUs and other embedded systems for Cortex M series CPUs before.

FPGAhacker 6y ago

> Apple just needs to thank whoever was in charge of acquiring PA Semi’s know how in 2008 Jim Keller as much as anyone I would think.

gigatexal 6y ago

Yes, the chip team at Apple is likely worth tens of billions on their own. Think about how many companies out there that would pay top dollar to have the chip performance that Apple does. I know the ARM ISA != Intel's X86 but on a perf v perf basis if Apple-level-performance CPUs were available to the mass market Intel would be in a world of hurt and would likely have to drop prices even more aggressively than it does when AMD puts out a competent chip.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> if Apple-level-performance CPUs were available to the mass market Intel would be in a world of hurt Amazon are betting on this on the server side. They've developed a number of ARM-powered EC2 instance types: A1, M6g, C6g, and R6g. They haven't yet made a burstable ARM instance type.
- gpderetta 6y ago
  Amazon doesn't have access to Apple CPUs, although ARM own designs have finally become quite reasonable for server workloads (and thats what Amazon is using)
  - gigatexal 6y ago
    right, and I don't think the above person was insinuating as much just that a company with large enough pockets like Amazon could take the ARM ISA and do what Apple did and make their own custom silicon for their own purposes. Or at least, that's what I hope they are doing.
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      Right, I hadn't meant to imply that Amazon are licensing Apple's ARM chips. I quoted Apple-level-performance CPUs after all, not Apple's CPUs. As you both rightly say, the ARM CPUs Amazon are using are not the same as Apple's. Instead, they are custom built for Amazon. [0][1] [0] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-ec2-instances-a1-powered-by-arm-based-aws-graviton-processors/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-ec2-instances-a1-powere... [1] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcing-new-amazon-ec2-m6g-c6g-and-r6g-instances-powered-by-next-generation-arm-based-aws-graviton2-processors/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcin...