3 ms·

Which "hardware standards"? Isn't the M1 an Armv8.5-A? What are we asking for here? I would like to know of a single software vendor, that is not Microsoft, wh

Which "hardware standards"? Isn't the M1 an Armv8.5-A? What are we asking for here? I would like to know of a single software vendor, that is not Microsoft, who may have influenced the design choices of a hardware vendor. Because it's not like Linus himself randomly walks into Intel offices to tell them how to get things done.

mhh__ 4y ago
Apple aren't completely compliant with the Arm spec. Probably lots of game mega-companies (influencing GPUs). Arm had special JavaScript instructions for a while. Linus did use to work for transmeta, at least.
- mrkstu 4y ago
  As far as I'm aware they are strictly a superset- everything required to run a standard ARM binary is there- but there are extra instructions available as well, which shouldn't require any extra coding for Linux to ignore and run as normal.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  > Probably lots of game mega-companies (influencing GPUs). Haven't ever heard of this. > Arm had special JavaScript instructions for a while Which is a design choice. ECMAscript is a standard, and the instruction seems to be a way of making certain conversions faster. From the release document [0]: "Armv8.3-A adds instructions that convert a double-precision floating-point number to a signed 32-bit integer with round towards zero. Where the integer result is outside the range of a signed 32-bit integer (DP float supports integer precision up to 53 bits), the value stored as the result is the integer conversion modulo 232, taking the same sign as the input float." It is not unusual for hardware vendors to include instructions that would make certain common operations faster. That does not mean that software vendors, and in this context, compiler engineers, dictate CPU design choices. [0] https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/architectures-and-processors-blog/posts/armv8-a-architecture-2016-additions https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/architecture...

mhh__ 4y ago

Apple aren't completely compliant with the Arm spec. Probably lots of game mega-companies (influencing GPUs). Arm had special JavaScript instructions for a while. Linus did use to work for transmeta, at least.

mrkstu 4y ago
As far as I'm aware they are strictly a superset- everything required to run a standard ARM binary is there- but there are extra instructions available as well, which shouldn't require any extra coding for Linux to ignore and run as normal.
manuelabeledo 4y ago
> Probably lots of game mega-companies (influencing GPUs). Haven't ever heard of this. > Arm had special JavaScript instructions for a while Which is a design choice. ECMAscript is a standard, and the instruction seems to be a way of making certain conversions faster. From the release document [0]: "Armv8.3-A adds instructions that convert a double-precision floating-point number to a signed 32-bit integer with round towards zero. Where the integer result is outside the range of a signed 32-bit integer (DP float supports integer precision up to 53 bits), the value stored as the result is the integer conversion modulo 232, taking the same sign as the input float." It is not unusual for hardware vendors to include instructions that would make certain common operations faster. That does not mean that software vendors, and in this context, compiler engineers, dictate CPU design choices. [0] https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/architectures-and-processors-blog/posts/armv8-a-architecture-2016-additions https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/architecture...