10 ms·

I am so happy to see the quick progress of Linux on the ARM-Macs. In the 80ies and 90ies, there were several competing processor architectures on the market, bu

by _ph_ 5y ago

I am so happy to see the quick progress of Linux on the ARM-Macs. In the 80ies and 90ies, there were several competing processor architectures on the market, but for the last 20 years for PCs it was x86 only. With the Apple Silicon, there is now a real contender, actually surpassing the current x86 offerings in many aspects. And that is, why competition between architectures is so important. And of course just interesting from a software development perspective. With Linux becoming a viable option on those machines, they become interesting for a far wider audience than just the MacOS users. Thanks to the great work by Alyssa, GPU acceleration should be close too. Then lets see when Linus gets himself a Mac, he already indicated that he would be interested to do so as long as he doesn't have to port Linux himself.

Y_Y 5y ago
I often find myself using ARM on the desktop nowadays. I use android phones, Nvidia devices, SoCs (most famously raspi).
GekkePrutser 5y ago
20 years ago IBM PowerPC was still a contender too. With Apple no less. The x86/64 solo reign was more like 15 years. But I miss it too. The 90s with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC. I still have several of those here at home :) Computers have become boring and it's nice ARM is shaking things up. I wonder if M1 will ever be fully supported though. With full unrestricted video, 3D and AI acceleration. There seems to be a lot of Apple secret sauce in these processors.
- oblio 5y ago
  > The x86/64 solo reign was more like 15 years. Solo, yes, probably 15 years. But domination? Probably starting with the IBM PC in 1981 (ok, make that 1982 or 1983 to allow for the sales ramp up) until 2020. That's a very long run for a computer architecture. I expect that the next architectures to rise to the top will be even more entrenched. We're way past computing's early years, childhood and adolescence.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    I was responding to the original OP who mentioned Intel only. I doubt it'll remain that stable. The mobile OSes have already embraced a number of platforms, not even all ARM based. Android seems to be quite flexible regarding architectures with its pre-compilation. I think this is a sign of what's to come. RISC-V is also an upcoming player and if it's successful it may spawn more fully open contenders. As we move to more AI integration there's a whole new lifecycle opening up too in terms of ML coprocessors. We're in the same situation as early computers with multiple vendor-specific solutions. I think on the security side there'll also be more hardware signature checking rather than the chain-based checks of Secure Boot. Rather than the OS checking if a program is legit, the CPU could do it (already done on some custom like consoles) So I don't think computing is really mature at all. It just has had a stable phase for a while.
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Yes, PCs are around since 1981, but if you looked around, they were not that commonplace outside of businesses and quite rare in private usages. There was the age of the home computers, first 8-Bit (Atari, Commodore, TI), then the 68k Machines, the first ARM. In parallel, all the great workstation vendors with their RISC chips. The PC for home usage really started only in the 90ies, scientists would use workstations. It was only towards the end of the 90ies, that x86 caught up with them and well into the 2000 years, when they overtook them. It was actually AMD who dealt the killing blow with the Athlon and especially the Opteron. At that time, Intel was pushing Ithanium as the architecture for professional usage and kept x86 onto 32 bit with more game-optimized processors (P4).
    - justin66 5y ago
      No offense, but that is all either wrong or ahistorical. You write about personal computing history like someone who experienced it after the fact and solely through blog posts. (are you writing about the PC revolution as you experienced it in some country other than the United States?)
      - prescriptivist 5y ago
- raverbashing 5y ago
  > with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. But some things like SPARC were just headache-inducing https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-window/ https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-windo...
  - tyingq 5y ago
    It was pretty amazing to enjoy 64 bit computing and before Intel had it. They were more popular in some niches, for a time, than anything else.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Yes Intel's attitude is too much based on marketing sometimes. "Consumers don't need 64-bit" (and trying to promote Itanium) "Consumers don't need ECC RAM" It holds back the industry now that they are the only PC platform. PS: I think Itanium was a really good idea but again marketing made it unviable. They wanted to position it purely for servers, just at a time where there was a real cost focus on servers using commodity hardware (e.g. from Google)
  - lmm 5y ago
    > And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. I agree with this part, but the sparc register windows are completely reasonable and obvious.
    - raverbashing 5y ago
      It might be reasonable, but it's a chore, especially on linux to work with it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902
      - mst 5y ago
        "Avoiding needing to spill registers to the stack" is a focus of much optimisation work in lots of places - and, yeah, it's absolutely work but the performance gains can still be worth it. Plus I'd argue that SPARC is enough simpler to work with than x86 in other ways that you could look at it as "spending your complexity budget somewhere else" more than it being more headache inducing. (though admittedly I cut my teeth on assembly on an ARM2 so basically every modern architecture is kinda headache inducingly complicated to me ;)
throw0101a 5y ago
In a few more years RISC-V may become a thing for general use as well.
- fosk 5y ago
  But will it be competitive enough?
intricatedetail 5y ago
Big problem is that you can't buy M1 cpu like you can e.g. i9. I think Apple should be forced to open up their platform so other manufacturers could make laptops or desktops with that CPU.
loudmax 5y ago
> With Linux becoming a viable option on those machines, they become interesting for a far wider audience than just the MacOS users. While the option of running Linux on one of these M1 chips is intriguing to many of us, I have a hard time seeing that this will bring these machines to a "far wider audience" than MacOS users. It does open up some niches, and in particular it could mean that people will still be able to make use of these laptops after Apple stops supporting them. But we're pretty much a rounding error for the duopoly that owns the desktop OS market. I do share your admiration for the accomplishments of Alyssa and all of those who are porting an open source operating system to a new hardware design with little help from the manufacturer.
- scoopertrooper 5y ago
  Macs have huge penetration into the developer market. I could see a lot of devs whacking Linux on their M1 Macs to enjoy benefits like being able to run containers outside of a virtual machine. If Apple waited 6 months and released a significantly cheaper 16 inch M1 Pro Mac with a non-XDR screen and in the old form factor (to save money on tooling), similar how they do with the iPhone SE line, then they'd make so much damn money from devs jumping on board.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    No they wouldn't. There really aren't enough devs around to make that statement true. Plus, if so many devs would do that, they can buy the 6-month-old refurbs at that time and do what they want. If they aren't doing that, then they wouldn't buy the machine you're imagining.
    - scoopertrooper 5y ago
      Devs may be small in number relative to the consumer market, but they're big in impact when it comes to building out an ecosystem. People complain about Linux on Desktop, but the Linux on Desktop is unreasonably good considering its market share. As devs build out that ecosystem it'll become easier bring products to ARM. Eventually, we might even see something like the Steam Machines built on an ARM64 platform. If it ever happens, it'll happen on the backs of those trail blazing devs who built out the ecosystem, because they were able to get a pretty rockin' laptop on an ARM64 platform. Devs also happen to be great evangelists for bringing technologies into the corporate ecosystem. This will create a demand for porting popular MDM and other corporate tooling over to ARM64. I'm a dev and I'd love a machine like that. I actually think the older form factor is better, I carry my laptop to and from work every day, so I appreciate a lighter and slimmer laptop and I don't think I'm alone on that account. I couldn't care less about a screen that can get up to 1000+ nits, but only when playing certain videos.
walrus01 5y ago
> With the Apple Silicon, there is now a real contender, actually surpassing the current x86 offerings in many aspects It's absolutely NOT a real contender for widespread use until you can buy a mini-itx, microatx or regular ATX motherboard from any one of the well known dozen Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, and an individual CPU to socket into it. Or at least a selection of motherboards with CPUs soldered onto them from same vendors. The hardware availability is basically a walled garden.
- sp332 5y ago
  Isn't that much harder with architectures without a BIOS equivalent? The components on the motherboard have to be told how to talk to each other. Swapping out the CPU would require some reconfiguration.
- weatherlight 5y ago
  it'll happen eventually :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxdRSCQfhyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxdRSCQfhyw https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/honeycomb-workstation/ https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/h... - Layerscape LX2160A 16-core Arm Cortex A72 (up to 2GHz) - up to 64GB DDR4 dual channel 3200MT/s - 4 x SATA 3.0 - 1 x PCIe x8 Gen 3.0, open slot (can support x16) - 4 x SFP+ ports (10GbE each) - 3 x USB 3.0 & 3 x USB 2.0 - GPIO header - 170mm x 170mm standard Mini ITX form factor
- vmception 5y ago
  Its coming
- tcmart14 5y ago
  I don't think whether you can buy it in a form factor though is a good indicator of "contender of widespread use." It ignores any technical merits and what the chip can actually do. Can it enable someone to check email, watch youtube, and check social media? Yes. Can it render graphics? Yes.If you put someone infront of a Macbook with an M1, can they accomplish everything hey can on an intel machine? Yes. Now, is it probably priced out of being a real contender for widespread use? Most likely. Is it offered is configurations that suite everyone? Maybe not. But that doesn't mean it can't accomplish the same or similar tasks. If someone can sit at a computer and accomplish all of their normal tasks, then for the most part, it is a contender for widespread use, it is just a cost factor.
systemvoltage 5y ago
> With the Apple Silicon, there is now a real contender Yeah, no. It's a walled ecosystem, not a 'contender' in the sense that it can't be horizontally integrated with other technologies.
- weatherlight 5y ago
  it's not a walled eco system, people really need to stop saying this. iPhone is a walled garden Macs are not a walled garden.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    It is. You can’t buy Apple Silicon without buying everything else including a laptop and macOS. It’s entirely vertically integrated from iCloud account to transistors. A real contender would be Amazon’s Annapurna Labs with their ARM processors or something with RISC-V.
aroman 5y ago
Linus did use a MacBook Air quite happily for several years. Running Linux, of course.

by _ph_ 5y ago

Y_Y 5y ago

I often find myself using ARM on the desktop nowadays. I use android phones, Nvidia devices, SoCs (most famously raspi).

GekkePrutser 5y ago

20 years ago IBM PowerPC was still a contender too. With Apple no less. The x86/64 solo reign was more like 15 years. But I miss it too. The 90s with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC. I still have several of those here at home :) Computers have become boring and it's nice ARM is shaking things up. I wonder if M1 will ever be fully supported though. With full unrestricted video, 3D and AI acceleration. There seems to be a lot of Apple secret sauce in these processors.

oblio 5y ago
> The x86/64 solo reign was more like 15 years. Solo, yes, probably 15 years. But domination? Probably starting with the IBM PC in 1981 (ok, make that 1982 or 1983 to allow for the sales ramp up) until 2020. That's a very long run for a computer architecture. I expect that the next architectures to rise to the top will be even more entrenched. We're way past computing's early years, childhood and adolescence.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I was responding to the original OP who mentioned Intel only. I doubt it'll remain that stable. The mobile OSes have already embraced a number of platforms, not even all ARM based. Android seems to be quite flexible regarding architectures with its pre-compilation. I think this is a sign of what's to come. RISC-V is also an upcoming player and if it's successful it may spawn more fully open contenders. As we move to more AI integration there's a whole new lifecycle opening up too in terms of ML coprocessors. We're in the same situation as early computers with multiple vendor-specific solutions. I think on the security side there'll also be more hardware signature checking rather than the chain-based checks of Secure Boot. Rather than the OS checking if a program is legit, the CPU could do it (already done on some custom like consoles) So I don't think computing is really mature at all. It just has had a stable phase for a while.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  Yes, PCs are around since 1981, but if you looked around, they were not that commonplace outside of businesses and quite rare in private usages. There was the age of the home computers, first 8-Bit (Atari, Commodore, TI), then the 68k Machines, the first ARM. In parallel, all the great workstation vendors with their RISC chips. The PC for home usage really started only in the 90ies, scientists would use workstations. It was only towards the end of the 90ies, that x86 caught up with them and well into the 2000 years, when they overtook them. It was actually AMD who dealt the killing blow with the Athlon and especially the Opteron. At that time, Intel was pushing Ithanium as the architecture for professional usage and kept x86 onto 32 bit with more game-optimized processors (P4).
  - justin66 5y ago
    No offense, but that is all either wrong or ahistorical. You write about personal computing history like someone who experienced it after the fact and solely through blog posts. (are you writing about the PC revolution as you experienced it in some country other than the United States?)
    - prescriptivist 5y ago
raverbashing 5y ago
> with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. But some things like SPARC were just headache-inducing https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-window/ https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-windo...
- tyingq 5y ago
  It was pretty amazing to enjoy 64 bit computing and before Intel had it. They were more popular in some niches, for a time, than anything else.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Yes Intel's attitude is too much based on marketing sometimes. "Consumers don't need 64-bit" (and trying to promote Itanium) "Consumers don't need ECC RAM" It holds back the industry now that they are the only PC platform. PS: I think Itanium was a really good idea but again marketing made it unviable. They wanted to position it purely for servers, just at a time where there was a real cost focus on servers using commodity hardware (e.g. from Google)
- lmm 5y ago
  > And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. I agree with this part, but the sparc register windows are completely reasonable and obvious.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    It might be reasonable, but it's a chore, especially on linux to work with it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902
    - mst 5y ago
      "Avoiding needing to spill registers to the stack" is a focus of much optimisation work in lots of places - and, yeah, it's absolutely work but the performance gains can still be worth it. Plus I'd argue that SPARC is enough simpler to work with than x86 in other ways that you could look at it as "spending your complexity budget somewhere else" more than it being more headache inducing. (though admittedly I cut my teeth on assembly on an ARM2 so basically every modern architecture is kinda headache inducingly complicated to me ;)

throw0101a 5y ago

In a few more years RISC-V may become a thing for general use as well.

fosk 5y ago
But will it be competitive enough?

intricatedetail 5y ago

Big problem is that you can't buy M1 cpu like you can e.g. i9. I think Apple should be forced to open up their platform so other manufacturers could make laptops or desktops with that CPU.

loudmax 5y ago

> With Linux becoming a viable option on those machines, they become interesting for a far wider audience than just the MacOS users. While the option of running Linux on one of these M1 chips is intriguing to many of us, I have a hard time seeing that this will bring these machines to a "far wider audience" than MacOS users. It does open up some niches, and in particular it could mean that people will still be able to make use of these laptops after Apple stops supporting them. But we're pretty much a rounding error for the duopoly that owns the desktop OS market. I do share your admiration for the accomplishments of Alyssa and all of those who are porting an open source operating system to a new hardware design with little help from the manufacturer.

scoopertrooper 5y ago
Macs have huge penetration into the developer market. I could see a lot of devs whacking Linux on their M1 Macs to enjoy benefits like being able to run containers outside of a virtual machine. If Apple waited 6 months and released a significantly cheaper 16 inch M1 Pro Mac with a non-XDR screen and in the old form factor (to save money on tooling), similar how they do with the iPhone SE line, then they'd make so much damn money from devs jumping on board.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  No they wouldn't. There really aren't enough devs around to make that statement true. Plus, if so many devs would do that, they can buy the 6-month-old refurbs at that time and do what they want. If they aren't doing that, then they wouldn't buy the machine you're imagining.
  - scoopertrooper 5y ago
    Devs may be small in number relative to the consumer market, but they're big in impact when it comes to building out an ecosystem. People complain about Linux on Desktop, but the Linux on Desktop is unreasonably good considering its market share. As devs build out that ecosystem it'll become easier bring products to ARM. Eventually, we might even see something like the Steam Machines built on an ARM64 platform. If it ever happens, it'll happen on the backs of those trail blazing devs who built out the ecosystem, because they were able to get a pretty rockin' laptop on an ARM64 platform. Devs also happen to be great evangelists for bringing technologies into the corporate ecosystem. This will create a demand for porting popular MDM and other corporate tooling over to ARM64. I'm a dev and I'd love a machine like that. I actually think the older form factor is better, I carry my laptop to and from work every day, so I appreciate a lighter and slimmer laptop and I don't think I'm alone on that account. I couldn't care less about a screen that can get up to 1000+ nits, but only when playing certain videos.

walrus01 5y ago

> With the Apple Silicon, there is now a real contender, actually surpassing the current x86 offerings in many aspects It's absolutely NOT a real contender for widespread use until you can buy a mini-itx, microatx or regular ATX motherboard from any one of the well known dozen Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, and an individual CPU to socket into it. Or at least a selection of motherboards with CPUs soldered onto them from same vendors. The hardware availability is basically a walled garden.

sp332 5y ago
Isn't that much harder with architectures without a BIOS equivalent? The components on the motherboard have to be told how to talk to each other. Swapping out the CPU would require some reconfiguration.
weatherlight 5y ago
it'll happen eventually :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxdRSCQfhyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxdRSCQfhyw https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/honeycomb-workstation/ https://www.solid-run.com/arm-servers-networking-platforms/h... - Layerscape LX2160A 16-core Arm Cortex A72 (up to 2GHz) - up to 64GB DDR4 dual channel 3200MT/s - 4 x SATA 3.0 - 1 x PCIe x8 Gen 3.0, open slot (can support x16) - 4 x SFP+ ports (10GbE each) - 3 x USB 3.0 & 3 x USB 2.0 - GPIO header - 170mm x 170mm standard Mini ITX form factor
vmception 5y ago
Its coming
tcmart14 5y ago
I don't think whether you can buy it in a form factor though is a good indicator of "contender of widespread use." It ignores any technical merits and what the chip can actually do. Can it enable someone to check email, watch youtube, and check social media? Yes. Can it render graphics? Yes.If you put someone infront of a Macbook with an M1, can they accomplish everything hey can on an intel machine? Yes. Now, is it probably priced out of being a real contender for widespread use? Most likely. Is it offered is configurations that suite everyone? Maybe not. But that doesn't mean it can't accomplish the same or similar tasks. If someone can sit at a computer and accomplish all of their normal tasks, then for the most part, it is a contender for widespread use, it is just a cost factor.

systemvoltage 5y ago

> With the Apple Silicon, there is now a real contender Yeah, no. It's a walled ecosystem, not a 'contender' in the sense that it can't be horizontally integrated with other technologies.

weatherlight 5y ago
it's not a walled eco system, people really need to stop saying this. iPhone is a walled garden Macs are not a walled garden.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  It is. You can’t buy Apple Silicon without buying everything else including a laptop and macOS. It’s entirely vertically integrated from iCloud account to transistors. A real contender would be Amazon’s Annapurna Labs with their ARM processors or something with RISC-V.

aroman 5y ago

Linus did use a MacBook Air quite happily for several years. Running Linux, of course.