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Soooo back on the LSE or? It was such a hot stock in 2014-15. Softbank kinda bought it at the peak. Still, Apple has proven ARM on the desktop is phenomenal, a

Soooo back on the LSE or? It was such a hot stock in 2014-15. Softbank kinda bought it at the peak. Still, Apple has proven ARM on the desktop is phenomenal, and Ampere has done the same in the datacenter. Both have swiftly made compiler support accelerate dramatically. I would love for my next desktop to be arm-based, and it would be great if it didn’t NEED to be a mac. Broad adoption of ARM would be a huge win for sustainability. I’m bullish on their business, even if their business model isn’t vertically scalable. I think that RISC V also has a bright future, but its still a bit far out before its a viable competitor. Still there have been some things that look really promising such as what is coming out of SiFive: https://www.sifive.com/press/sifive-raises-risc-v-performance-bar-with-new-best-in-class https://www.sifive.com/press/sifive-raises-risc-v-performanc... And Intel just announced a $1B fund for companies building on their Open Foundry RISC-V alliance. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-1b-fund-risc-v https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-1b-fund-risc-v Big things are happening for small instruction sets… watch this space.

tjoff 5y ago
The thing that stands out about ARM is that the user has less control of the hardware. The manufacturers try and succeed in keeping an extremely closed ecosystem. Why would you want that? The Intel+AMD duopoly seems like nirvana compared to the Ampere and M1. In fact, Ampere and M1 are a hint of the most dystopian future of computing I can imagine.
- klelatti 5y ago
  Any architecture that forces something like the Intel Management Engine on users is closer to dystopia than nirvana.
  - als0 5y ago
    Absolutely. Whether it's ARM-based or RISC-V, nothing will stop high-end SoC vendors from developing closed hardware blocks or firmware, especially if they have customers from the DRM space (CA vendors).
- als0 5y ago
  > In fact, Ampere and M1 are a hint of the most dystopian future of computing I can imagine. OK I'll bite. What aspect of Ampere is locked down? They are nothing like the bad closed-source hacks that we see in small development boards.
  - tjoff 5y ago
    I apologize. I confused Ampere with Amazon's Graviton.
    - floatboth 5y ago
      AWS offers Graviton instances in a bare-metal way too, so you can see for yourself what the SoC offers. It's quite clean, there is a Designware PCIe filtering quirk (same as on e.g. the Marvell Armada8k) but other than that it's SBSA-style UEFI+ACPI. Very standard system. In terms of firmware openness, yeah, you don't get the firmware source, but you don't get to touch the machines physically either so you wouldn't have a chance to run a custom build anyway :D (While Ampere Altras are supported by upstream EDK2, have fun)
      - tjoff 5y ago
        >AWS offers Graviton instances in a bare-metal way too, so you can see for yourself what the SoC offers. Oh, we should be so grateful... Or perhaps be happy with what we got and not sacrifice everything for some very short term 5% benefits?
        floatboth 5y ago
        How exactly do you sacrifice ANYTHING compared to any other VPS rental?!
        tjoff 5y ago
        By supporting closed ecosystems designed to take away power from you? Take one guess.
- andrepd 5y ago
  Can you elaborate? I don't understand what you mean.
- perfopt 5y ago
  This has nothing to do with ARM. Unlike the PC there is no standard for system architecture (including boards). ARM based designers like Qualcomm, NVIDIA etc can choose to have their own board and system architecture. For example, they can boot of any memory location or lock the user out of using an exception level like EL3/EL2 etc. That is why the ecosystem looks closed. Nothing stops a SoC designer from giving complete access to hardware. BTW - any SoC designer that uses RISC-V can do the same.
  - tjoff 5y ago
    ... and as long as that remains true it is the most user hostile general purpose platforms we've come up with. It should not be celebrated. Or we will fix the mistake that is the PC forever.
  - lizknope 5y ago
    There are standards like the Arm Server Base System Architecture but companies don't have to follow it. Most of the ARM servers are custom things for big datacenters. As you said the smaller systems like phones and other embedded systems have their own boot systems and memory layout etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Base_System_Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Base_System_Architectur... https://developer.arm.com/documentation/den0029/latest https://developer.arm.com/documentation/den0029/latest
    - floatboth 5y ago
      In the server space, there is no good reason to do weird unusual things → even e.g. the "custom" AWS hardware is as standards-compliant as possible (if you look at the ACPI tables on an a1.metal instance, you'll only find an AMZNxxxx device for the PCIe host controller, and that's only because Synopsys Designware IP sucks^W has a stupid hardware bug related to filtering that requires a little workaround quirk)
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  Uh... M1 (at least when Mac-fused) isn't actually locked-down. You do have to jump through a few hoops to boot modified kernels[0], but it's a reasonable level of security for a chip primarily intended to go into laptops. There's an ongoing effort to reverse-engineer the M1 and port Linux to it[1], which has actually gone really well. There's also plenty of ARM hardware out there that really doesn't bother with lockdowns. Raspberry Pi, for example, will happily boot whatever you put on the SD card[2]. There's also plenty of other dev boards and chips that are similarly not locked-down. The reason why people think of ARM as "more locked-down" is because it's more often used in locked-down hardware, but there's no architectural requirement for it to be this way. The real big problem with ARM is that every chip is very different from one another. SoC designers have a habit of reassigning addresses and IDs on every new chip, with no thought towards backwards compatibility. So even if an ARM chip has no technical protection against third-party operating systems, any Linux kernel you build is unlikely to boot unless the SoC vendor has bothered to upstream support for it. Ironically, Apple is one of the few ARM vendors that actually does maintain backwards compatibility where feasible. [0] The first admin account is granted possession of a local signing key that lets that user sign kernels. This means that you need to be able to log into that account under macOS in order to install Linux - evil maids need not apply. [1] Legend has it that if you say "M1" three times in a HackerNews comment, you'll summon the primary developer of Asahi Linux. [2] You do have to provide a GPU boot blob; no clue if there's a project to reimplement that.
  - floatboth 5y ago
    > no clue if there's a project to reimplement that There was! And it even booted Linux in some capacity: https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware > every chip is very different from one another Eh, the usual embedded SoCs are not that different from each other — ARM GIC, ARM timer, lots of Synopsys Designware crap for SDMMC/XHCI/PCIe/etc. For many SoCs it's totally feasible to make standards-compliant firmware, e.g. for the Rockchip RK3566 there is https://github.com/jaredmcneill/quartz64_uefi https://github.com/jaredmcneill/quartz64_uefi And SoCs from the networking world (Marvell, NXP) are typically supported by upstream EDK2.
  - tjoff 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
adrian_b 5y ago
It was said that Softbank wants to launch the IPO on NASDAQ, so it seems that it will not go back to LSE.
peanuty1 5y ago
Softbank would be stupid to list on the LSE.

tjoff 5y ago

The thing that stands out about ARM is that the user has less control of the hardware. The manufacturers try and succeed in keeping an extremely closed ecosystem. Why would you want that? The Intel+AMD duopoly seems like nirvana compared to the Ampere and M1. In fact, Ampere and M1 are a hint of the most dystopian future of computing I can imagine.

klelatti 5y ago
Any architecture that forces something like the Intel Management Engine on users is closer to dystopia than nirvana.
- als0 5y ago
  Absolutely. Whether it's ARM-based or RISC-V, nothing will stop high-end SoC vendors from developing closed hardware blocks or firmware, especially if they have customers from the DRM space (CA vendors).
als0 5y ago
> In fact, Ampere and M1 are a hint of the most dystopian future of computing I can imagine. OK I'll bite. What aspect of Ampere is locked down? They are nothing like the bad closed-source hacks that we see in small development boards.
- tjoff 5y ago
  I apologize. I confused Ampere with Amazon's Graviton.
  - floatboth 5y ago
    AWS offers Graviton instances in a bare-metal way too, so you can see for yourself what the SoC offers. It's quite clean, there is a Designware PCIe filtering quirk (same as on e.g. the Marvell Armada8k) but other than that it's SBSA-style UEFI+ACPI. Very standard system. In terms of firmware openness, yeah, you don't get the firmware source, but you don't get to touch the machines physically either so you wouldn't have a chance to run a custom build anyway :D (While Ampere Altras are supported by upstream EDK2, have fun)
    - tjoff 5y ago
      >AWS offers Graviton instances in a bare-metal way too, so you can see for yourself what the SoC offers. Oh, we should be so grateful... Or perhaps be happy with what we got and not sacrifice everything for some very short term 5% benefits?
      - floatboth 5y ago
        How exactly do you sacrifice ANYTHING compared to any other VPS rental?!
        tjoff 5y ago
        By supporting closed ecosystems designed to take away power from you? Take one guess.
andrepd 5y ago
Can you elaborate? I don't understand what you mean.
perfopt 5y ago
This has nothing to do with ARM. Unlike the PC there is no standard for system architecture (including boards). ARM based designers like Qualcomm, NVIDIA etc can choose to have their own board and system architecture. For example, they can boot of any memory location or lock the user out of using an exception level like EL3/EL2 etc. That is why the ecosystem looks closed. Nothing stops a SoC designer from giving complete access to hardware. BTW - any SoC designer that uses RISC-V can do the same.
- tjoff 5y ago
  ... and as long as that remains true it is the most user hostile general purpose platforms we've come up with. It should not be celebrated. Or we will fix the mistake that is the PC forever.
- lizknope 5y ago
  There are standards like the Arm Server Base System Architecture but companies don't have to follow it. Most of the ARM servers are custom things for big datacenters. As you said the smaller systems like phones and other embedded systems have their own boot systems and memory layout etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Base_System_Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Base_System_Architectur... https://developer.arm.com/documentation/den0029/latest https://developer.arm.com/documentation/den0029/latest
  - floatboth 5y ago
    In the server space, there is no good reason to do weird unusual things → even e.g. the "custom" AWS hardware is as standards-compliant as possible (if you look at the ACPI tables on an a1.metal instance, you'll only find an AMZNxxxx device for the PCIe host controller, and that's only because Synopsys Designware IP sucks^W has a stupid hardware bug related to filtering that requires a little workaround quirk)
kmeisthax 5y ago
Uh... M1 (at least when Mac-fused) isn't actually locked-down. You do have to jump through a few hoops to boot modified kernels[0], but it's a reasonable level of security for a chip primarily intended to go into laptops. There's an ongoing effort to reverse-engineer the M1 and port Linux to it[1], which has actually gone really well. There's also plenty of ARM hardware out there that really doesn't bother with lockdowns. Raspberry Pi, for example, will happily boot whatever you put on the SD card[2]. There's also plenty of other dev boards and chips that are similarly not locked-down. The reason why people think of ARM as "more locked-down" is because it's more often used in locked-down hardware, but there's no architectural requirement for it to be this way. The real big problem with ARM is that every chip is very different from one another. SoC designers have a habit of reassigning addresses and IDs on every new chip, with no thought towards backwards compatibility. So even if an ARM chip has no technical protection against third-party operating systems, any Linux kernel you build is unlikely to boot unless the SoC vendor has bothered to upstream support for it. Ironically, Apple is one of the few ARM vendors that actually does maintain backwards compatibility where feasible. [0] The first admin account is granted possession of a local signing key that lets that user sign kernels. This means that you need to be able to log into that account under macOS in order to install Linux - evil maids need not apply. [1] Legend has it that if you say "M1" three times in a HackerNews comment, you'll summon the primary developer of Asahi Linux. [2] You do have to provide a GPU boot blob; no clue if there's a project to reimplement that.
- floatboth 5y ago
  > no clue if there's a project to reimplement that There was! And it even booted Linux in some capacity: https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware > every chip is very different from one another Eh, the usual embedded SoCs are not that different from each other — ARM GIC, ARM timer, lots of Synopsys Designware crap for SDMMC/XHCI/PCIe/etc. For many SoCs it's totally feasible to make standards-compliant firmware, e.g. for the Rockchip RK3566 there is https://github.com/jaredmcneill/quartz64_uefi https://github.com/jaredmcneill/quartz64_uefi And SoCs from the networking world (Marvell, NXP) are typically supported by upstream EDK2.
- tjoff 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

adrian_b 5y ago

It was said that Softbank wants to launch the IPO on NASDAQ, so it seems that it will not go back to LSE.

peanuty1 5y ago

Softbank would be stupid to list on the LSE.