6 ms·

I would quote Orwell here: "Who Controls the Past Controls the Future". It is about lack of control over legacy killing the progress. The power of Intel is "pr

I would quote Orwell here: "Who Controls the Past Controls the Future". It is about lack of control over legacy killing the progress. The power of Intel is "proven" legacy, but building completely new architecture is expensive and prone to adoption failure (Itanium?) when Intel has no control over OS (Windows), apps or virtualization software. Then Apple has control over all that: they can make hardware (scaled up mobile HW), change their OS to support it (iOS bits), support past apps (Rosetta), enforce support in new apps (compiler, LLVM, certification).

mmphosis 6y ago
Apple is now Full-Stack. It's turtles all the way down to the CPU!
beagle3 6y ago
Itanium was a really bad architecture for the time (and possibly still is). It was a bet that sufficiently smart compilers would be available, but they weren’t available in time. They aren’t even available today 20 years down the line in a form that would have justified Itanium if they were available then. It wouldn’t have mattered if Intel controlled the OS or not - it just wasn’t competitive. There’s nothing you can learn from it about Apple - who delivered an ultra competitive, likely even when emulating Intel architecture in software.
nickik 6y ago
This is not really the case. Most Intel servers run linux, Intel has nearly complete control over linux in a practical sense. They can put developers in it and update the OS and unless its a very user hostile feature it will go into the mainline kernel and be everywhere. The same goes for compiler and so on. Intel could easily open up their boot and make the store there much better. The don't quite have the vertical control of Apple, but to say they are fundamentally hindered by their legacy is quite questionable. The fucked up improving their manufacturing.
- imhoguy 6y ago
  Unlikely. There is more Linux devices running as Android on ARM than any other processors. You I can run Termux on ARM Android with complete set of of GNU tools. Also ARM is supported natively by Debian and Ubuntu [1]. Once devs will sort out their new shiny ARM Macs whoes (Docker, other tooling) I smell there may be ARM server market rising soon. [1] https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/installation-guide/armhf/ch02s01.html https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/installation-guide/armhf/ch02s01...
  - seabrookmx 6y ago
    Amazon already offers EC2 A1 (ARM64) instances available, and I'm sure Nvidia's purchase of ARM is going to bear fruit in the data center. AMD's Epyc chips are pretty awesome though too so I don't think x64 is on it's death bed.. but it should be an interesting couple of years watching this space heat up.
klelatti 6y ago
I think that the ARMv7 -> ARMv8/Aarch64 move is interesting in this context. Arm has swapped a large part of its application user base from 32 bit to a completely incompatible but more modern 64 bit ISA and Apple has cast off the 32bit legacy completely due to its ability to control the whole stack.

mmphosis 6y ago

Apple is now Full-Stack. It's turtles all the way down to the CPU!

beagle3 6y ago

Itanium was a really bad architecture for the time (and possibly still is). It was a bet that sufficiently smart compilers would be available, but they weren’t available in time. They aren’t even available today 20 years down the line in a form that would have justified Itanium if they were available then. It wouldn’t have mattered if Intel controlled the OS or not - it just wasn’t competitive. There’s nothing you can learn from it about Apple - who delivered an ultra competitive, likely even when emulating Intel architecture in software.

nickik 6y ago

This is not really the case. Most Intel servers run linux, Intel has nearly complete control over linux in a practical sense. They can put developers in it and update the OS and unless its a very user hostile feature it will go into the mainline kernel and be everywhere. The same goes for compiler and so on. Intel could easily open up their boot and make the store there much better. The don't quite have the vertical control of Apple, but to say they are fundamentally hindered by their legacy is quite questionable. The fucked up improving their manufacturing.

imhoguy 6y ago
Unlikely. There is more Linux devices running as Android on ARM than any other processors. You I can run Termux on ARM Android with complete set of of GNU tools. Also ARM is supported natively by Debian and Ubuntu [1]. Once devs will sort out their new shiny ARM Macs whoes (Docker, other tooling) I smell there may be ARM server market rising soon. [1] https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/installation-guide/armhf/ch02s01.html https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/installation-guide/armhf/ch02s01...
- seabrookmx 6y ago
  Amazon already offers EC2 A1 (ARM64) instances available, and I'm sure Nvidia's purchase of ARM is going to bear fruit in the data center. AMD's Epyc chips are pretty awesome though too so I don't think x64 is on it's death bed.. but it should be an interesting couple of years watching this space heat up.

klelatti 6y ago

I think that the ARMv7 -> ARMv8/Aarch64 move is interesting in this context. Arm has swapped a large part of its application user base from 32 bit to a completely incompatible but more modern 64 bit ISA and Apple has cast off the 32bit legacy completely due to its ability to control the whole stack.