7 ms·

Apple's M1 has made ARM mainstream for laptops, Lets see which company does same for server space. Hopefully ARM on cloud will result in cheaper prices.

lifty 6y ago
Apple's M1 will make ARM mainstream on the server side.
- leesalminen 6y ago
  Personally, I don’t see many server admins choosing to pay the Apple Tax to get M1 into their data center. I don’t see how the watt/performance ratio could pay off that kind of tax.
  - lifty 6y ago
    I did not mean to imply that the actual M1 will be used in data centers. Apple is quite popular among developers and its also a trendsetter which will probably lead to other computer manufacturers to adopt ARM for personal computers. So having more people use ARM on their personal computers will lead to more ARM adoption in the data center.
    - leesalminen 6y ago
      Ah, ok, I understand. Thanks for clarifying!
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      > Apple is quite popular among developers... The great majority of developers use Windows or Linux according to every Stack Overflow survey from the past ten years. Only ~25% use a Mac.
      - alireza94 6y ago
        I believe interpreting statistics from those surveys in this way isn't fair. There are so many developers around the world but the pattern of value/money generation by them is not uniform; in other words, a small percentage of developers work for companies that pay the largest share of server bills and penetration rate of macOS devices among developers of top companies is probably higher than average. (I'm not implying that developers who work on non-macOS devices, make less value because your device doesn't have - nearly - anything to do with your impact. I'm just talking about a trend and possible misinterpretation of data)
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - kalleboo 6y ago
        25% is still "quite popular". If 25% of servers switch to ARM that is massive.
  - simondotau 6y ago
    The OP wasn't suggesting Apple M1 chips in the data centre, but rather that Apple M1 chips in developer workstations will disrupt the inertia of x64 dev –> x64 prod. It will be easier for developers to choose ARM in production when their local box is ARM.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  Apple hasn't seemed interested historically. And the Nuvia folks left Apple to found their company explicitly because they thought an M1 style CPU core would do well in servers but Apple wasn't interested in doing that.
  - mushufasa 6y ago
    it's not that apple will sell server chips. it's that developers can locally work on arm which makes it easier to deploy to severs. linus torvalds had a quote about this...
    - Symmetry 6y ago
      Ah, ok, that makes sense.
    - gregsadetsky 6y ago
      Linus' quote/post: """ And the only way that changes is if you end up saying "look, you can deploy more cheaply on an ARM box, and here's the development box you can do your work on". """ (emphasis in original) https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpostid=183486 https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpost... Thanks, I did not know about this!
      - josephg 6y ago
        It’s wild to consider that my next computer (an arm M1 Mac) will be compiling code for mobile (arm) and the cloud (arm). I wonder if we’ll ever see AMD releasing a competitive arm chip and joining the bandwagon.
        akmittal 5y ago
        Now with NVIDIA owning ARM I'm not sure AMD will do that
- jamesfmilne 6y ago
  Apple have been hiring for Kubernetes and related roles. This may well be for their own devops for Apple services. However I'd be amazed if they don't release some kind of managed service for running Swift code in the cloud. Caveat emptor, though.
  - jacques_chester 6y ago
    I have a similar view of what Apple are up to. Too many high-profile hires to be purely toiling in the mines.
ageyfman 6y ago
this is inevitable.
- k__ 6y ago
  My operating systems teacher 2001 was a total RISC fan and always said it would eventually overtake CISC. I guess, he didn't expect this to take well after his retirement.
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    ARM today is probably more CISCy than what he considered CISC in 2001.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      Eh, it has a lot of instructions, but that was only the surface of RISC. It's a deeper design philosophy than that.
    - floatboth 6y ago
      AArch64 is load-store + fixed-instruction-length, which is basically what "RISC" has come to mean in the modern day. X86 in 2001 was already… not that :)
      - k__ 6y ago
        I always understood it as that too.
    - lofi_lory 6y ago
      Also, isn't x86 ISA just a translation layer today? I thought on the metal, there is a RISC like architecture these days anyway.
      - nonameiguess 6y ago
        In most cases, yes, but it doesn't get rid of the complexity for compiler backends that can't directly target the real instruction sets Intel uses and have to target the compatibility shim layer instead.
ericbarrett 6y ago
I nominate Amazon for this award. As mentioned in another comment here, ~50% of newly allocated EC2 instances are ARM.

lifty 6y ago

Apple's M1 will make ARM mainstream on the server side.

leesalminen 6y ago
Personally, I don’t see many server admins choosing to pay the Apple Tax to get M1 into their data center. I don’t see how the watt/performance ratio could pay off that kind of tax.
- lifty 6y ago
  I did not mean to imply that the actual M1 will be used in data centers. Apple is quite popular among developers and its also a trendsetter which will probably lead to other computer manufacturers to adopt ARM for personal computers. So having more people use ARM on their personal computers will lead to more ARM adoption in the data center.
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    Ah, ok, I understand. Thanks for clarifying!
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    > Apple is quite popular among developers... The great majority of developers use Windows or Linux according to every Stack Overflow survey from the past ten years. Only ~25% use a Mac.
    - alireza94 6y ago
      I believe interpreting statistics from those surveys in this way isn't fair. There are so many developers around the world but the pattern of value/money generation by them is not uniform; in other words, a small percentage of developers work for companies that pay the largest share of server bills and penetration rate of macOS devices among developers of top companies is probably higher than average. (I'm not implying that developers who work on non-macOS devices, make less value because your device doesn't have - nearly - anything to do with your impact. I'm just talking about a trend and possible misinterpretation of data)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - kalleboo 6y ago
      25% is still "quite popular". If 25% of servers switch to ARM that is massive.
- simondotau 6y ago
  The OP wasn't suggesting Apple M1 chips in the data centre, but rather that Apple M1 chips in developer workstations will disrupt the inertia of x64 dev –> x64 prod. It will be easier for developers to choose ARM in production when their local box is ARM.
Symmetry 6y ago
Apple hasn't seemed interested historically. And the Nuvia folks left Apple to found their company explicitly because they thought an M1 style CPU core would do well in servers but Apple wasn't interested in doing that.
- mushufasa 6y ago
  it's not that apple will sell server chips. it's that developers can locally work on arm which makes it easier to deploy to severs. linus torvalds had a quote about this...
  - Symmetry 6y ago
    Ah, ok, that makes sense.
  - gregsadetsky 6y ago
    Linus' quote/post: """ And the only way that changes is if you end up saying "look, you can deploy more cheaply on an ARM box, and here's the development box you can do your work on". """ (emphasis in original) https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpostid=183486 https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=183440&curpost... Thanks, I did not know about this!
    - josephg 6y ago
      It’s wild to consider that my next computer (an arm M1 Mac) will be compiling code for mobile (arm) and the cloud (arm). I wonder if we’ll ever see AMD releasing a competitive arm chip and joining the bandwagon.
      - akmittal 5y ago
        Now with NVIDIA owning ARM I'm not sure AMD will do that
jamesfmilne 6y ago
Apple have been hiring for Kubernetes and related roles. This may well be for their own devops for Apple services. However I'd be amazed if they don't release some kind of managed service for running Swift code in the cloud. Caveat emptor, though.
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  I have a similar view of what Apple are up to. Too many high-profile hires to be purely toiling in the mines.

ageyfman 6y ago

this is inevitable.

k__ 6y ago
My operating systems teacher 2001 was a total RISC fan and always said it would eventually overtake CISC. I guess, he didn't expect this to take well after his retirement.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  ARM today is probably more CISCy than what he considered CISC in 2001.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Eh, it has a lot of instructions, but that was only the surface of RISC. It's a deeper design philosophy than that.
  - floatboth 6y ago
    AArch64 is load-store + fixed-instruction-length, which is basically what "RISC" has come to mean in the modern day. X86 in 2001 was already… not that :)
    - k__ 6y ago
      I always understood it as that too.
  - lofi_lory 6y ago
    Also, isn't x86 ISA just a translation layer today? I thought on the metal, there is a RISC like architecture these days anyway.
    - nonameiguess 6y ago
      In most cases, yes, but it doesn't get rid of the complexity for compiler backends that can't directly target the real instruction sets Intel uses and have to target the compatibility shim layer instead.

ericbarrett 6y ago

I nominate Amazon for this award. As mentioned in another comment here, ~50% of newly allocated EC2 instances are ARM.