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I have a copy of Byte magazine with the front cover that says “Is Unix dead?”. Back then, everyone thought Windows NT had “won”, and it was game over for every

I have a copy of Byte magazine with the front cover that says “Is Unix dead?”. Back then, everyone thought Windows NT had “won”, and it was game over for every other operating system. Same thing here. Nvidia might look strong now but all it takes is an open source project that competes effectively to change everything.

DeathArrow 3y ago
>I have a copy of Byte magazine with the front cover that says “Is Unix dead?”. For practical purposes it is. Bur it's not Windows NT that killed it, it's Linux.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- worrycue 3y ago
  You miss his point. NT was thought to have “won” and their position seem unassailable but the unexpected happened and their reign in the server world was short lived.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    It certainly won the workstation market, moreso with the ongoing upgradability issues in the Mac Pro.
- rcme 3y ago
  Aren’t macOS and iOS Unix-based? Unix is one of the most widely used operating systems in the world right now.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    macOS yes, iOS not really, you won't go far using only UNIX for iOS apps. The actually reality is POSIX flavoured OSes are most widely used operating systems in the world, for various levels of what means to be POSIX, and to what level they expose it. "Transcending POSIX: The End of an Era?" https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/transcending-posix-end-era https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/transcending...
    - rcme 3y ago
      But Darwin, the iOS kernel, is Unix?
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        The iOS kernel isn't exactly Darwin. Additionly Darwin evolved from a mix of BSD and MACH. NeXTSTEP drivers were written in Objective-C, and a C++ subset on Darwin. In any case you won't be running CLI applications on iOS, rather applications that depend on a mix of Objective-C and nowadays also Swift, hardly UNIX. Using BSD sockets on iOS doesn't support all the iOS networking capabilities, for example. NeXT approach, later adopted by Apple, was similar to Windows NT POSIX in spirit. The UNIX compatibility is there to help bring applications into the platform, and take place in US government contracts, not to make it easier to port applications elsewhere. There are even some recordings from meetings at NeXT, with Steve Jobs discussing how NeXT should position itself on the workstation market.
worrycue 3y ago
Al it takes is a different better AI model that doesn’t require the type of computing capabilities Nvidia offers or for the LLM hype to die. Nvidia made their fortune riding 2 consecutive hype waves - crypto and LLMs.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > Al it takes is a different better AI model that doesn’t require the type of computing capabilities Nvidia offers That's a pretty reductive way of looking at things. Nvidia got to where they are today because they made the "different better AI model" by spending billions of dollars in AI research when other companies were fighting over scraps. They were the ones investing in a high-level GPGPU programming model when Apple and AMD were busy stabbing each other in the back over OpenCL. Just look at their list of papers and compare it to the contributions of your favorite FAANG member: https://research.nvidia.com/research-area/machine-learning-artificial-intelligence https://research.nvidia.com/research-area/machine-learning-a... Nvidia owns this market because Apple, AMD and Intel have a grudge match that is apparently more important than cross-platform harmony.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Add Khronos to the party, the blindness from all parties to push C for OpenCL, until it was too later for anyone else to care. I attended one Khronos webminar where the panel was surprised that anyone would ask about Fortran support, and showed total lack of knowledge about PGI compilers. Additionally with very crude tooling.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      I exclude Khronos because at least they're able to put aside industry politics to deploy an open API. The problem is the rest of the industry - even if there was a good alternative, nobody would use it. Microsoft has DirectML™, Apple has Accelerate™, and Google has a few thousand tensor accelerators they don't know what to do with. Everyone is out for blood in this market. Going after Khronos for not addressing Fortran FFI is a cart before the horse argument, from where I'm standing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

DeathArrow 3y ago

>I have a copy of Byte magazine with the front cover that says “Is Unix dead?”. For practical purposes it is. Bur it's not Windows NT that killed it, it's Linux.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
worrycue 3y ago
You miss his point. NT was thought to have “won” and their position seem unassailable but the unexpected happened and their reign in the server world was short lived.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  It certainly won the workstation market, moreso with the ongoing upgradability issues in the Mac Pro.
rcme 3y ago
Aren’t macOS and iOS Unix-based? Unix is one of the most widely used operating systems in the world right now.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  macOS yes, iOS not really, you won't go far using only UNIX for iOS apps. The actually reality is POSIX flavoured OSes are most widely used operating systems in the world, for various levels of what means to be POSIX, and to what level they expose it. "Transcending POSIX: The End of an Era?" https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/transcending-posix-end-era https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/transcending...
  - rcme 3y ago
    But Darwin, the iOS kernel, is Unix?
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      The iOS kernel isn't exactly Darwin. Additionly Darwin evolved from a mix of BSD and MACH. NeXTSTEP drivers were written in Objective-C, and a C++ subset on Darwin. In any case you won't be running CLI applications on iOS, rather applications that depend on a mix of Objective-C and nowadays also Swift, hardly UNIX. Using BSD sockets on iOS doesn't support all the iOS networking capabilities, for example. NeXT approach, later adopted by Apple, was similar to Windows NT POSIX in spirit. The UNIX compatibility is there to help bring applications into the platform, and take place in US government contracts, not to make it easier to port applications elsewhere. There are even some recordings from meetings at NeXT, with Steve Jobs discussing how NeXT should position itself on the workstation market.

worrycue 3y ago

Al it takes is a different better AI model that doesn’t require the type of computing capabilities Nvidia offers or for the LLM hype to die. Nvidia made their fortune riding 2 consecutive hype waves - crypto and LLMs.

smoldesu 3y ago
> Al it takes is a different better AI model that doesn’t require the type of computing capabilities Nvidia offers That's a pretty reductive way of looking at things. Nvidia got to where they are today because they made the "different better AI model" by spending billions of dollars in AI research when other companies were fighting over scraps. They were the ones investing in a high-level GPGPU programming model when Apple and AMD were busy stabbing each other in the back over OpenCL. Just look at their list of papers and compare it to the contributions of your favorite FAANG member: https://research.nvidia.com/research-area/machine-learning-artificial-intelligence https://research.nvidia.com/research-area/machine-learning-a... Nvidia owns this market because Apple, AMD and Intel have a grudge match that is apparently more important than cross-platform harmony.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Add Khronos to the party, the blindness from all parties to push C for OpenCL, until it was too later for anyone else to care. I attended one Khronos webminar where the panel was surprised that anyone would ask about Fortran support, and showed total lack of knowledge about PGI compilers. Additionally with very crude tooling.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    I exclude Khronos because at least they're able to put aside industry politics to deploy an open API. The problem is the rest of the industry - even if there was a good alternative, nobody would use it. Microsoft has DirectML™, Apple has Accelerate™, and Google has a few thousand tensor accelerators they don't know what to do with. Everyone is out for blood in this market. Going after Khronos for not addressing Fortran FFI is a cart before the horse argument, from where I'm standing.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]