7 ms·

I for one would welcome this. Firstly, as mentioned, it gives people incentive to look into RiscV. That aside, for far too long QCOM has had a monopoly on the

by axaxs 6y ago

I for one would welcome this. Firstly, as mentioned, it gives people incentive to look into RiscV. That aside, for far too long QCOM has had a monopoly on the phone chip market. Patents aside, which increasingly became irrelevant due to the death of Sprint, their major advantage has always been in Adreno, which as far as I remember AMD basically did for them. Mali is terrible. If Nvidia could revamp ARM graphics at the spec level, we'd have real competition again from Samsung, Mediatek, and potentially others.

m4rtink 6y ago
Even with the potential for some positive outcomes I'm not sure it's worth the potential disruption.
xvilka 6y ago
It will be the end of Linux on ARM. They will choke platform with blobs until the inevitable death. NVIDIA and open-source is like matter and antimatter - they simply cannot coexist in the same place and time.
- axaxs 6y ago
  ARM has little use except for open source. They have zero incentive to kill it, as they don't compete with it.
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    > ARM has little use except for open source. Huh?? ARM is probably the most popular CPU architecture in use today -- unlike x86, which is largely limited to desktop/laptop and server computing, ARM is used in a lot of embedded applications.
    - axaxs 6y ago
      Have you the counts of systems using ARM on Linux(Android) vs ARM in everything else? It's not even close.
      - duskwuff 6y ago
        You're underestimating the number of ARM microcontrollers in deeply embedded devices. For example, most hard disks and SSDs have at least one ARM core -- and often several -- running the device. They're also quite common in peripherals, like keyboards and mice. The firmware for these devices is often either a realtime embedded OS (like FreeRTOS), or is entirely bespoke. It's virtually never open-source. Even if you're only looking at mobile phones, the cellular baseband is often implemented on ARM as well, and it definitely isn't a Linux system either. (Nor is it open source.)
        throwmemoney 6y ago
        Last I heard was hard disks and SSD manufacturers were moving away from ARM to RISC-V to save money on ARM license payments. Source https://hn.algolia.com/?q=swerv https://hn.algolia.com/?q=swerv
        Someone 6y ago
        Indeed. https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/record-numbers-arm-based-chips-shipped https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/record-numbers-arm-b...: “Arm silicon partners shipped a record 6.4 billion Arm-based chips in the fourth quarter of 2019” Compare that with https://www.slashgear.com/the-2019-global-smartphone-sales-top-10-list-is-here-27611469/ https://www.slashgear.com/the-2019-global-smartphone-sales-t..., which says about 1,5 billion smartphones were sold in the four quarters of 2019. Also, Android, I think, by now is an edge case of open source. The kernel is, but there’s a thick proprietary layer on top of it without which it wouldn’t be Android.
        axaxs 6y ago
        I'll just reply once here. Thanks for the source. Keep in mind each cell phone can/does have multiple ARM chips, which I attribute still to 'Linux', maybe that's not fair. I tried to get real stats and didn't get far. The most I could find was that ARM was actually declining somewhat in embedded, and that embedded was less than half of revenues. Also, that ARM had 90 percent of the 'phone/tablet/laptop' market, but nothing amounting to close to a majority anywhere else. I think I was incorrect saying that it isn't close, it likely is. I still think more go to supporting a Linux device than not, but am happy to be proven wrong if such data exists.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  You nailed it. Nvidia's refusal on releasing sufficient technical information and noncooperation with the FOSS community is already self-evident on multiple platforms. Need to play the "Blob" song by OpenBSD. https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 > Blob was popular at school he was helpful too / He could get your motor runnin' / with a drop of goo / He was givin' it away never charged a dime / But by the time he graduated / Blob was business slime! > He was a blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah > He's givin' you the Evil Eye! > Now everybody had it / they was drivin' around / They was givin' up their freedoms / for convenience now / Blobbin' up the freeway, water black as pitch And somehow little Blobby was a growin' rich! > He was a blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah > It's linkin' time! > Now it was out of control / n' fishy's came to depend / on Blobby's Blob Blah, seemed to be no end / Then his empire spread and to their surprise / Blobby been a growin' to incredible size! > He's a blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b > Then along came a genius Doctor Puffystein / And he battled the Blob / who had crossed the line / He was 50 feet tall — Doctor said "No fear" / I got a sample of Blob I can reverse engineer! > But it was too late! / Blob was takin' over the world! / He wants your video! / Ya he wants your net! / He wants your drive! / He wants it all!! > Somebody help us! / Noooooooo! > NVIDIA! / Intel! / Atheros! / 3-Ware! / VIA! / ATI! / Broadcom! / TI! / Myricom! / HighPoint! / Adaptec! / Mylex! / ICP Vortex! / and IBM! > Takin' over the world!
  - znpy 6y ago
    did you really spam the whole song here ?
    - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
      No. This is not the whole song, the whole song is longer than that.
      - znpy 6y ago
- pjmlp 6y ago
  ARM is all about licensing and selling hardware IP, they will use Linux to the extent that it helps to sell their IP, just like most companies that actually pay for engineers to contribute some parts of their crown jewels to Linux, while leaving the rest for their own in-house distributions. Also in case you haven't noticed, the IoT domain where ARM thrives is getting full of BSD/MIT POSIX clones, guess why. ARM mbed, Zephyr, RTOS, NuttX, Azure RTOS ThreadX, ...
  - stragies 6y ago
    Having an liberally licensed code-base with make it very easy for entities to publish a benign version on github, and then deploy an "enhanced" version on the real hardware, cryptographiclly signed, and not dumpable. They'll find something, that can support the argument, that not all functionality can be open-sourced, and that is why the published binary will never have the same checksum as something you have compiled from the public sources.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      From my comment history you will see I am pretty much into commercial and dual licensing, so I do agree with your point, however kind of feels like the way copyleft licenses have been managed has brought us back to the commercial licenses with source code, just under a different name to make them more appealing to younger generations.
      - stragies 6y ago
        Hi, thanks for replying! > the way copyleft licenses have been managed has brought us back to the commercial licenses with source code, just under a different name to make them more appealing to younger generations. I think, I'm following along (&agree), but to be sure, could you perhaps elaborate a bit on that? (Also for other? readers)
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Basically Linux kernel, GNU utilities and GCC are the only projects left with a copyleft license, almost everyone else migrated to non-copyleft licenses in the context of making money with some form of open source. And not everything gets upstream, in name of keeping the main business at the company's soul, for example those optimizations used by clang on PS4? Sure all of those that don't reveal PS4 architecture features that could eventually be "misused". The large majority of those business have moved into clang, thus reducing GCC usage to copyleft hardliners, Linux is visible on ChromeOS and Android but not on a context that it can fully profit from and then there is Fuchsia waiting on the backstage. So in a couple of generations, when copyleft software is just a memory in digital books, we will have gone full circle to the days when buying developer software would entitle you to an extra floppy with a partial copy the source code. The only difference is how that partial copy gets delivered, which will be just the upstream of non-copyleft software.
leeoniya 6y ago
> Mali is terrible care to elaborate? the Panfrost project has reverse engineered a bunch of popular Mali ISAs and now there's hardware support on the kernel for VA-API on these chips. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Panfrost https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Panfrost
- axaxs 6y ago
  Mali has never come close to Adreno. Simple as that.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  > has reverse engineered a bunch of popular Mali ISAs As a FOSS user and developer, this is already a big problem to me. Although the situation of Nvidia's mobile GPUs (e.g. Tegra) is a bit better than desktop GPUs, but not much better.
  - ac29 6y ago
    Why is it a problem for there to be additional hardware usable with open source drivers? Or is it that it was reverse engineered?
    - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
      The problem is not reverse engineering, but having to reverse engineer.
      - leeoniya 6y ago
        i should have clarified that i was asking why Mali is more terrible than Adreno, MediaTek, etc. AFAIK, all embedded GPU drivers have to be reverse engineered and none are open source. as you mentioned, it looks like Tegra might have some open-source contrib from the mfg.
        pabs3 6y ago
dralley 6y ago
Samsung recently entered into a licensing deal with AMD to use their graphics technology in a mobile design. Early performance leaks/rumors are very promising (if true). I don't see this as much of a problem, competition is already on the way.
- axaxs 6y ago
  After what, 8 years? I welcome competition, but that's ALWAYS been the exynos curse. What if Nvidia makes a better GPU spec?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
worldismine2020 6y ago
The best results on these graphs are not from Adreno https://www.anandtech.com/show/15963/oppos-reno3-vs-reno3-pro-vs-reno3-pro-5g-why-dont-we-see-more-mediatek-dimensity-1000-phones/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15963/oppos-reno3-vs-reno3-pr...
ksec 6y ago
QCOM dominance has absolutely nothing to do with Adreno. It has to do with their superior modem.

by axaxs 6y ago

m4rtink 6y ago

Even with the potential for some positive outcomes I'm not sure it's worth the potential disruption.

xvilka 6y ago

It will be the end of Linux on ARM. They will choke platform with blobs until the inevitable death. NVIDIA and open-source is like matter and antimatter - they simply cannot coexist in the same place and time.

axaxs 6y ago
ARM has little use except for open source. They have zero incentive to kill it, as they don't compete with it.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  > ARM has little use except for open source. Huh?? ARM is probably the most popular CPU architecture in use today -- unlike x86, which is largely limited to desktop/laptop and server computing, ARM is used in a lot of embedded applications.
  - axaxs 6y ago
    Have you the counts of systems using ARM on Linux(Android) vs ARM in everything else? It's not even close.
    - duskwuff 6y ago
      You're underestimating the number of ARM microcontrollers in deeply embedded devices. For example, most hard disks and SSDs have at least one ARM core -- and often several -- running the device. They're also quite common in peripherals, like keyboards and mice. The firmware for these devices is often either a realtime embedded OS (like FreeRTOS), or is entirely bespoke. It's virtually never open-source. Even if you're only looking at mobile phones, the cellular baseband is often implemented on ARM as well, and it definitely isn't a Linux system either. (Nor is it open source.)
      - throwmemoney 6y ago
        Last I heard was hard disks and SSD manufacturers were moving away from ARM to RISC-V to save money on ARM license payments. Source https://hn.algolia.com/?q=swerv https://hn.algolia.com/?q=swerv
      - Someone 6y ago
        Indeed. https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/record-numbers-arm-based-chips-shipped https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/record-numbers-arm-b...: “Arm silicon partners shipped a record 6.4 billion Arm-based chips in the fourth quarter of 2019” Compare that with https://www.slashgear.com/the-2019-global-smartphone-sales-top-10-list-is-here-27611469/ https://www.slashgear.com/the-2019-global-smartphone-sales-t..., which says about 1,5 billion smartphones were sold in the four quarters of 2019. Also, Android, I think, by now is an edge case of open source. The kernel is, but there’s a thick proprietary layer on top of it without which it wouldn’t be Android.
        axaxs 6y ago
        I'll just reply once here. Thanks for the source. Keep in mind each cell phone can/does have multiple ARM chips, which I attribute still to 'Linux', maybe that's not fair. I tried to get real stats and didn't get far. The most I could find was that ARM was actually declining somewhat in embedded, and that embedded was less than half of revenues. Also, that ARM had 90 percent of the 'phone/tablet/laptop' market, but nothing amounting to close to a majority anywhere else. I think I was incorrect saying that it isn't close, it likely is. I still think more go to supporting a Linux device than not, but am happy to be proven wrong if such data exists.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
You nailed it. Nvidia's refusal on releasing sufficient technical information and noncooperation with the FOSS community is already self-evident on multiple platforms. Need to play the "Blob" song by OpenBSD. https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 > Blob was popular at school he was helpful too / He could get your motor runnin' / with a drop of goo / He was givin' it away never charged a dime / But by the time he graduated / Blob was business slime! > He was a blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah > He's givin' you the Evil Eye! > Now everybody had it / they was drivin' around / They was givin' up their freedoms / for convenience now / Blobbin' up the freeway, water black as pitch And somehow little Blobby was a growin' rich! > He was a blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah > It's linkin' time! > Now it was out of control / n' fishy's came to depend / on Blobby's Blob Blah, seemed to be no end / Then his empire spread and to their surprise / Blobby been a growin' to incredible size! > He's a blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah blah blah blah blah / blah blah B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b > Then along came a genius Doctor Puffystein / And he battled the Blob / who had crossed the line / He was 50 feet tall — Doctor said "No fear" / I got a sample of Blob I can reverse engineer! > But it was too late! / Blob was takin' over the world! / He wants your video! / Ya he wants your net! / He wants your drive! / He wants it all!! > Somebody help us! / Noooooooo! > NVIDIA! / Intel! / Atheros! / 3-Ware! / VIA! / ATI! / Broadcom! / TI! / Myricom! / HighPoint! / Adaptec! / Mylex! / ICP Vortex! / and IBM! > Takin' over the world!
- znpy 6y ago
  did you really spam the whole song here ?
  - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    No. This is not the whole song, the whole song is longer than that.
    - znpy 6y ago
pjmlp 6y ago
ARM is all about licensing and selling hardware IP, they will use Linux to the extent that it helps to sell their IP, just like most companies that actually pay for engineers to contribute some parts of their crown jewels to Linux, while leaving the rest for their own in-house distributions. Also in case you haven't noticed, the IoT domain where ARM thrives is getting full of BSD/MIT POSIX clones, guess why. ARM mbed, Zephyr, RTOS, NuttX, Azure RTOS ThreadX, ...
- stragies 6y ago
  Having an liberally licensed code-base with make it very easy for entities to publish a benign version on github, and then deploy an "enhanced" version on the real hardware, cryptographiclly signed, and not dumpable. They'll find something, that can support the argument, that not all functionality can be open-sourced, and that is why the published binary will never have the same checksum as something you have compiled from the public sources.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    From my comment history you will see I am pretty much into commercial and dual licensing, so I do agree with your point, however kind of feels like the way copyleft licenses have been managed has brought us back to the commercial licenses with source code, just under a different name to make them more appealing to younger generations.
    - stragies 6y ago
      Hi, thanks for replying! > the way copyleft licenses have been managed has brought us back to the commercial licenses with source code, just under a different name to make them more appealing to younger generations. I think, I'm following along (&agree), but to be sure, could you perhaps elaborate a bit on that? (Also for other? readers)
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Basically Linux kernel, GNU utilities and GCC are the only projects left with a copyleft license, almost everyone else migrated to non-copyleft licenses in the context of making money with some form of open source. And not everything gets upstream, in name of keeping the main business at the company's soul, for example those optimizations used by clang on PS4? Sure all of those that don't reveal PS4 architecture features that could eventually be "misused". The large majority of those business have moved into clang, thus reducing GCC usage to copyleft hardliners, Linux is visible on ChromeOS and Android but not on a context that it can fully profit from and then there is Fuchsia waiting on the backstage. So in a couple of generations, when copyleft software is just a memory in digital books, we will have gone full circle to the days when buying developer software would entitle you to an extra floppy with a partial copy the source code. The only difference is how that partial copy gets delivered, which will be just the upstream of non-copyleft software.

leeoniya 6y ago

> Mali is terrible care to elaborate? the Panfrost project has reverse engineered a bunch of popular Mali ISAs and now there's hardware support on the kernel for VA-API on these chips. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Panfrost https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Panfrost

axaxs 6y ago
Mali has never come close to Adreno. Simple as that.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> has reverse engineered a bunch of popular Mali ISAs As a FOSS user and developer, this is already a big problem to me. Although the situation of Nvidia's mobile GPUs (e.g. Tegra) is a bit better than desktop GPUs, but not much better.
- ac29 6y ago
  Why is it a problem for there to be additional hardware usable with open source drivers? Or is it that it was reverse engineered?
  - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    The problem is not reverse engineering, but having to reverse engineer.
    - leeoniya 6y ago
      i should have clarified that i was asking why Mali is more terrible than Adreno, MediaTek, etc. AFAIK, all embedded GPU drivers have to be reverse engineered and none are open source. as you mentioned, it looks like Tegra might have some open-source contrib from the mfg.
      - pabs3 6y ago

dralley 6y ago

Samsung recently entered into a licensing deal with AMD to use their graphics technology in a mobile design. Early performance leaks/rumors are very promising (if true). I don't see this as much of a problem, competition is already on the way.

axaxs 6y ago
After what, 8 years? I welcome competition, but that's ALWAYS been the exynos curse. What if Nvidia makes a better GPU spec?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

worldismine2020 6y ago

The best results on these graphs are not from Adreno https://www.anandtech.com/show/15963/oppos-reno3-vs-reno3-pro-vs-reno3-pro-5g-why-dont-we-see-more-mediatek-dimensity-1000-phones/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15963/oppos-reno3-vs-reno3-pr...

ksec 6y ago

QCOM dominance has absolutely nothing to do with Adreno. It has to do with their superior modem.