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I wonder if the Apple Silicon decision is going to have a large impact on what CPUs are used in the datacenter? I (and I suspect many others) would just defaul

I wonder if the Apple Silicon decision is going to have a large impact on what CPUs are used in the datacenter? I (and I suspect many others) would just default to x86_64, because that's what I develop on and compile to. I suspect many developers on Apple computers will start to look at the differences and choose whatever meets their requirements while minimizing costs. Should this trend continue, this could even have effects on the whole x86_64 ecosystem, as the datacenter CPU market has a large effect on the high end consumer CPU market.

est31 6y ago
That's what Linus Torvalds said too: ARM won't have a chance in the datacenter until it gets onto desktop computers of developers first. https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpostid=183486 https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpost... That moment is now here. Sure, it's only a subset of the market, but Mac devices are a significant percentage of developer computers (28%), way higher than in the general population (17%). https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-developers-primary-operating-systems https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-de... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
- hk1337 6y ago
  That seems true, AWS already had graviton processors but it’s availability seemed to get quite a boost after Apple Silicon.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I did not have a 88000, SPARC, PA-RISC, RS/6000 desktop to develop on UNIX. Likewise, with the return of timesharing, anyone can log into their assigned server slot and work just like I was doing 30 years ago.
  - em500 6y ago
    > I did not have a 88000, SPARC, PA-RISC, RS/6000 desktop to develop on UNIX. That may have contributed to their demise.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Free beer UNIX in the form of Linux did it.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    Does it really matter these days? 99% of development is done in platform agnostic languages where CPU architecture doesn’t matter anyway. Even endianness is mostly hidden away.
  - thethimble 6y ago
    You don’t necessarily need a majority to influence the population. Nassim Taleb has described several examples of “intolerant minorities” that influence the behavior of the whole. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar thing happens with ARM. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
    - eecc 6y ago
      Well, I do hope that in this case the “intolerant minority” will drive cross-compilation and platform independence of code. It would be sad - and in the long term unsuccessful - if it just Balkanized the development landscape.
      - est31 6y ago
        Yeah it's quite fortunate that just as everyone is dropping x86 32 bit support, aarch64 comes along and prevents the ecosystem from hardcoding x86_64 too much. It makes sure that the computing landscape doesn't assume too much about the arch.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      My point being that Apple adoption of ARM is irrelevant for servers, Apple products aren't even available in most countries below tier 2 in an amount that developers would care. They will either be using Windows in some form (even if pirated), now with Linux VMs as standard feature, or some Linux variant.
      - est31 6y ago
        It's a chicken and egg problem. Generally though, I expect ARM to be cheaper in the long run as there are more companies that can build ARM chips. Even if the users of those clouds won't see the difference because of profit margins, it's in the interest of Azure, AWS, etc to push users towards the cheaper hardware. Already the fact they use ARM at all improves their situation on the table with Intel and AMD quite a lot.
      - 6y ago
  - doctor_eval 6y ago
    Did you work on 88K with DG/UX? I loved that OS. All my 88K work was done on a dumb Wyse 60 terminal logged into one, and I’d busily UUCP my files between the various machines depending on which ones I was working on. But things are a bit different now, it’s much more convenient to work on a laptop, so most people do that. Maybe the pendulum will swing the other way and we’ll start timesharing again, with laptops as terminals instead of standalone machines, but even if that’s possible in theory, there are few providers of ARM in the cloud at the moment. It’s a chicken and egg problem and I think Linus is right, it’s going to take pressure from devs, most of whom IMO don’t care enough to make a difference. The tipping point will be when deploying to x86 becomes annoying (for some measure of annoying). Right now, even though I’d personally like to deploy to ARM (or at least give it a red hot go), my cloud provider (Vultr) doesn’t support it yet, and I don’t personally plan to go ARM on my desktop until next year. But I’m a CPU enthusiast. Most people wouldn’t bother to go the the extra effort.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      It was the UNIX used at the university compute center when I arrived there, and what we got to use the first couple of years, alongside Solaris on our own department. We used IBM X Windows terminals, and green phosphor text ones to connect to them. By the time I graduated, they had been replaced by Red-Hat Linux.
    - rogerbinns 5y ago
      I worked with 88K DG/UX. Back in those times our company did a desktop environment for UNIX workstations (X Windows didn't come with one as standard). We had over 20 different versions of UNIX systems, including a Sony workstation. 88K DG/UX didn't last very long before they switched to x86, which we also had. Under my desk I had Motorola's 88110 system (a stackable with a SCSI floppy disk!) The thing that stood out most about DG was just how nice all their staff were. I mean really nice. Even in those days it became very apparent that whatever workstations developers worked on were what was then best supported in the products even for non-GUI software. Slowly but surely the workstation vendors dropped support to server only, meanwhile Windows spread from workstations to servers even though it was considered inferior. Linux also spread for the same reasons.
- rbut 6y ago
  That’s assuming all current Mac developers decide to switch to ARM macs. I (Mac developer of 13 years) have switched away to linux. I’m sure there are others like me.
  - idnefju 6y ago
    Not for me, the user experience for Linux based PCs hasn’t changed in 10 years. That is it still not as good as as macOS.
    - broknbottle 6y ago
      The desktop experience on macOS has gotten worse with every release while the desktop experience on Linux just keeps getting better and better. Fedora, openSUSE Leap, Ubuntu all offer a great experience.
    - hk1337 6y ago
      I think Linux has gotten better but it's still pretty choppy and amateur compared to macOS.
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      Are macs still shipping with severely outdated CLI tools? 10 years ago, Mac users just got the ability to resize a window by any edge or corner... How's that really good window management system working out for ya? It's shocking that the Mac UX is so good that 75% of the developers out there would rather not use one... Meanwhile developers are the group that uses them more than the general population so both groups obviously disagree that Macs have a good UX at all lul.
      - evilduck 5y ago
        Windows is still shipping without CLI tools and Linux distros also mostly don't ship with build-essential or headers, -dev packages or every language toolchain. Every system requires setup and MacOS shipping with older GPL2 packages puts it squarely between the two alternatives in terms of setup and configuration cost. As for the WM differences, its just a different way of thinking about it, or a preference. None of them really bother me, personally.
- varispeed 6y ago
  Why does it matter what CPU one is running on their desktop? In my laptop I have a consumer Intel CPU and AMD on a desktop, but my servers run on Xeon and ARM. Even for a second I didn't think that oh I have a Intel desktop CPU, so I need to avoid ARM. As long as project compiles for different architecture and you have good test coverage only thing that matters is performance and cost.
  - f6v 6y ago
    I like my development environment to be as close as possible to production. I guess Docker for M1 will run ARM versions of containers? Then I can run the same containers on the server.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    Cross-compiling isn't fun. If my next startup is powered by a high performance C++ core that it's built on x86, you bet I'm going to run it on x86 instead of trying to cross-compile it for ARM, for which benefit by the way? Idem if I run ARM locally, I'll deploy on ARM. Of course this does not apply to interpreted languages or any of the modern languages (Go, Rust, Zig) that make cross compiling _somewhat_ easier.
    - appletrotter 6y ago
      a lot of tech stacks aren’t going to require cross compiling though
      - 1_player 5y ago
        To be honest I think the desktop question is misleading. x86 to most is a known quantity, there is very few specific reasons to choose ARM instead of x86. But if desktop ARM becomes commonplace, it's a good indicator that ARM is finally competitive for "serious" workloads, and people might invest in it more. As thing stands right now and IMO, it's getting there but Apple having M1 is not enough for me, as CTO, to look into ARM servers, if not as a curiosity.
- stabbles 6y ago
  There's two new supercomputers being built with NVIDIA ARM CPUs: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16610/nvidia-unveils-grace-a-highperformance-arm-server-cpu-for-use-in-ai-systems https://www.anandtech.com/show/16610/nvidia-unveils-grace-a-...
stevekemp 6y ago
I suspect you're right. I needed a cheap offsite host for running some monitoring a couple of years back, and deployed a small ARM host (via scaleway I think). Running docker containers on it was OK, and cross-compiling my golang monitoring stuff was easy enough. But over time I just wanted to use my existing pipelines and deploy x86 stuff. So in the end it was a novelty, and while cheaper than an amd64 host it was eventually replaced so that I had a consistent set of deployment targets.
n42 6y ago
I think it will. I am personally targeting arm64/Graviton2 on my side projects because the cost/performance improvement is noticeable. I think this will only snowball for adoption in work environments.
aidos 6y ago
Totally. We've spent the last 2 weeks getting all our dependencies recompiled for arm64 and now we're there I'm pretty keen to see what our bang for buck looks like on gravton2 machines (we've been using 64 core c6g.metal machines for compiling). There's just one final remaining vendor dependency that we're running via qemu on x86 that's holding me back at this stage.
cutthegrass2 6y ago
I'm tech lead for a SaaS platform that currently spends ~$>500k per month on compute with AWS. The platform generates >$400m annually in revenue. We are looking to switch over to Graviton ASAP. The cost/performance ratio is just too appealing to ignore now.

est31 6y ago

That's what Linus Torvalds said too: ARM won't have a chance in the datacenter until it gets onto desktop computers of developers first. https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpostid=183486 https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpost... That moment is now here. Sure, it's only a subset of the market, but Mac devices are a significant percentage of developer computers (28%), way higher than in the general population (17%). https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-developers-primary-operating-systems https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-de... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

hk1337 6y ago
That seems true, AWS already had graviton processors but it’s availability seemed to get quite a boost after Apple Silicon.
pjmlp 6y ago
I did not have a 88000, SPARC, PA-RISC, RS/6000 desktop to develop on UNIX. Likewise, with the return of timesharing, anyone can log into their assigned server slot and work just like I was doing 30 years ago.
- em500 6y ago
  > I did not have a 88000, SPARC, PA-RISC, RS/6000 desktop to develop on UNIX. That may have contributed to their demise.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Free beer UNIX in the form of Linux did it.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Does it really matter these days? 99% of development is done in platform agnostic languages where CPU architecture doesn’t matter anyway. Even endianness is mostly hidden away.
- thethimble 6y ago
  You don’t necessarily need a majority to influence the population. Nassim Taleb has described several examples of “intolerant minorities” that influence the behavior of the whole. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar thing happens with ARM. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
  - eecc 6y ago
    Well, I do hope that in this case the “intolerant minority” will drive cross-compilation and platform independence of code. It would be sad - and in the long term unsuccessful - if it just Balkanized the development landscape.
    - est31 6y ago
      Yeah it's quite fortunate that just as everyone is dropping x86 32 bit support, aarch64 comes along and prevents the ecosystem from hardcoding x86_64 too much. It makes sure that the computing landscape doesn't assume too much about the arch.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    My point being that Apple adoption of ARM is irrelevant for servers, Apple products aren't even available in most countries below tier 2 in an amount that developers would care. They will either be using Windows in some form (even if pirated), now with Linux VMs as standard feature, or some Linux variant.
    - est31 6y ago
      It's a chicken and egg problem. Generally though, I expect ARM to be cheaper in the long run as there are more companies that can build ARM chips. Even if the users of those clouds won't see the difference because of profit margins, it's in the interest of Azure, AWS, etc to push users towards the cheaper hardware. Already the fact they use ARM at all improves their situation on the table with Intel and AMD quite a lot.
    - 6y ago
- doctor_eval 6y ago
  Did you work on 88K with DG/UX? I loved that OS. All my 88K work was done on a dumb Wyse 60 terminal logged into one, and I’d busily UUCP my files between the various machines depending on which ones I was working on. But things are a bit different now, it’s much more convenient to work on a laptop, so most people do that. Maybe the pendulum will swing the other way and we’ll start timesharing again, with laptops as terminals instead of standalone machines, but even if that’s possible in theory, there are few providers of ARM in the cloud at the moment. It’s a chicken and egg problem and I think Linus is right, it’s going to take pressure from devs, most of whom IMO don’t care enough to make a difference. The tipping point will be when deploying to x86 becomes annoying (for some measure of annoying). Right now, even though I’d personally like to deploy to ARM (or at least give it a red hot go), my cloud provider (Vultr) doesn’t support it yet, and I don’t personally plan to go ARM on my desktop until next year. But I’m a CPU enthusiast. Most people wouldn’t bother to go the the extra effort.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    It was the UNIX used at the university compute center when I arrived there, and what we got to use the first couple of years, alongside Solaris on our own department. We used IBM X Windows terminals, and green phosphor text ones to connect to them. By the time I graduated, they had been replaced by Red-Hat Linux.
  - rogerbinns 5y ago
    I worked with 88K DG/UX. Back in those times our company did a desktop environment for UNIX workstations (X Windows didn't come with one as standard). We had over 20 different versions of UNIX systems, including a Sony workstation. 88K DG/UX didn't last very long before they switched to x86, which we also had. Under my desk I had Motorola's 88110 system (a stackable with a SCSI floppy disk!) The thing that stood out most about DG was just how nice all their staff were. I mean really nice. Even in those days it became very apparent that whatever workstations developers worked on were what was then best supported in the products even for non-GUI software. Slowly but surely the workstation vendors dropped support to server only, meanwhile Windows spread from workstations to servers even though it was considered inferior. Linux also spread for the same reasons.
rbut 6y ago
That’s assuming all current Mac developers decide to switch to ARM macs. I (Mac developer of 13 years) have switched away to linux. I’m sure there are others like me.
- idnefju 6y ago
  Not for me, the user experience for Linux based PCs hasn’t changed in 10 years. That is it still not as good as as macOS.
  - broknbottle 6y ago
    The desktop experience on macOS has gotten worse with every release while the desktop experience on Linux just keeps getting better and better. Fedora, openSUSE Leap, Ubuntu all offer a great experience.
  - hk1337 6y ago
    I think Linux has gotten better but it's still pretty choppy and amateur compared to macOS.
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    Are macs still shipping with severely outdated CLI tools? 10 years ago, Mac users just got the ability to resize a window by any edge or corner... How's that really good window management system working out for ya? It's shocking that the Mac UX is so good that 75% of the developers out there would rather not use one... Meanwhile developers are the group that uses them more than the general population so both groups obviously disagree that Macs have a good UX at all lul.
    - evilduck 5y ago
      Windows is still shipping without CLI tools and Linux distros also mostly don't ship with build-essential or headers, -dev packages or every language toolchain. Every system requires setup and MacOS shipping with older GPL2 packages puts it squarely between the two alternatives in terms of setup and configuration cost. As for the WM differences, its just a different way of thinking about it, or a preference. None of them really bother me, personally.
varispeed 6y ago
Why does it matter what CPU one is running on their desktop? In my laptop I have a consumer Intel CPU and AMD on a desktop, but my servers run on Xeon and ARM. Even for a second I didn't think that oh I have a Intel desktop CPU, so I need to avoid ARM. As long as project compiles for different architecture and you have good test coverage only thing that matters is performance and cost.
- f6v 6y ago
  I like my development environment to be as close as possible to production. I guess Docker for M1 will run ARM versions of containers? Then I can run the same containers on the server.
- 1_player 6y ago
  Cross-compiling isn't fun. If my next startup is powered by a high performance C++ core that it's built on x86, you bet I'm going to run it on x86 instead of trying to cross-compile it for ARM, for which benefit by the way? Idem if I run ARM locally, I'll deploy on ARM. Of course this does not apply to interpreted languages or any of the modern languages (Go, Rust, Zig) that make cross compiling _somewhat_ easier.
  - appletrotter 6y ago
    a lot of tech stacks aren’t going to require cross compiling though
    - 1_player 5y ago
      To be honest I think the desktop question is misleading. x86 to most is a known quantity, there is very few specific reasons to choose ARM instead of x86. But if desktop ARM becomes commonplace, it's a good indicator that ARM is finally competitive for "serious" workloads, and people might invest in it more. As thing stands right now and IMO, it's getting there but Apple having M1 is not enough for me, as CTO, to look into ARM servers, if not as a curiosity.
stabbles 6y ago
There's two new supercomputers being built with NVIDIA ARM CPUs: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16610/nvidia-unveils-grace-a-highperformance-arm-server-cpu-for-use-in-ai-systems https://www.anandtech.com/show/16610/nvidia-unveils-grace-a-...

stevekemp 6y ago

I suspect you're right. I needed a cheap offsite host for running some monitoring a couple of years back, and deployed a small ARM host (via scaleway I think). Running docker containers on it was OK, and cross-compiling my golang monitoring stuff was easy enough. But over time I just wanted to use my existing pipelines and deploy x86 stuff. So in the end it was a novelty, and while cheaper than an amd64 host it was eventually replaced so that I had a consistent set of deployment targets.

n42 6y ago

I think it will. I am personally targeting arm64/Graviton2 on my side projects because the cost/performance improvement is noticeable. I think this will only snowball for adoption in work environments.

aidos 6y ago

Totally. We've spent the last 2 weeks getting all our dependencies recompiled for arm64 and now we're there I'm pretty keen to see what our bang for buck looks like on gravton2 machines (we've been using 64 core c6g.metal machines for compiling). There's just one final remaining vendor dependency that we're running via qemu on x86 that's holding me back at this stage.

cutthegrass2 6y ago

I'm tech lead for a SaaS platform that currently spends ~$>500k per month on compute with AWS. The platform generates >$400m annually in revenue. We are looking to switch over to Graviton ASAP. The cost/performance ratio is just too appealing to ignore now.