3 ms·

Meanwhile x86 has maintained backwards compat for (checks calendar) yeah decades. Literally decades. With standards up the wazoo to avoid the disaster that is t

by bfrog 2y ago

Meanwhile x86 has maintained backwards compat for (checks calendar) yeah decades. Literally decades. With standards up the wazoo to avoid the disaster that is the Arm ecosystem without UEFI or something like it. Every Arm SoC being a snowflake needing special attention by the OS is a huge hassle. There's a reason there's no simplified Arm installer for operating systems.

dan-robertson 2y ago
Historically this backwards compatibility was a competitive moat for intel – having a large supply of weird instructions with some undocumented behaviour thrown in makes it more expensive to make competing chips.
- loeg 2y ago
  The ISA isn't what makes x86 easier for operating systems to support than ARM SoCs. It's things like generic ACPICA instead of hardcoded devicetrees.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    Some ARM systems (mainly servers) do support ACPI; allowing for one image to run on multiple processors and devices. However… ACPI is apparently a pretty awful thing to implement. When it doesn’t work, or mistakes are made (looking at my own 13th gen HP laptop right now - borked ACPI tables means unpatchable broken sleep on Linux), then it’s pure frustration. Device trees on the other hand are much more binary. Either everything generally works or it doesn’t at all. It’s a valid approach.
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      You can override broken ACPI tables. The keyword to search for is "dsdt". For example, if you have an HP Omen this repo has a fix: https://github.com/j0hnwang/OMEN-Transcend-16-ACPI-fix https://github.com/j0hnwang/OMEN-Transcend-16-ACPI-fix But yes, device trees are far nicer to work with.
    - 10000truths 2y ago
      Flawed implementations of open specs can be worked around with things like quirk tables. A spec held hostage by a non-cooperating vendor cannot. In the world of ARM SoCs, bad vendors won't even provide a device tree, just a binary image compiled from a patched kernel.
  - dan-robertson 2y ago
    To be clear, I wasn’t claiming anything about operating systems. Merely that adding many weird instructions was a strategy intel used to try to make the jobs of amd and centaur and suchlike harder.
- rldjbpin 2y ago
  nobody is a saint on this matter. both parties act the way they do to support their business position. short-term support helps qualcomm sell more because their customers want to sell more phones to the same users. on the other hand, for the industrial partners there is an "LTS" model of support given (side effect being fairphone 5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37320800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37320800). long-term support through backwards compatibility helps intel because they can sell new chips with the assurance that the ancient, unmaintained industrial software continues to run in a shinier box.
knowitnone 2y ago
there's no simplified Linux installer either and every distro creates one and keeps re-inventing it

by bfrog 2y ago

dan-robertson 2y ago

Historically this backwards compatibility was a competitive moat for intel – having a large supply of weird instructions with some undocumented behaviour thrown in makes it more expensive to make competing chips.

loeg 2y ago
The ISA isn't what makes x86 easier for operating systems to support than ARM SoCs. It's things like generic ACPICA instead of hardcoded devicetrees.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  Some ARM systems (mainly servers) do support ACPI; allowing for one image to run on multiple processors and devices. However… ACPI is apparently a pretty awful thing to implement. When it doesn’t work, or mistakes are made (looking at my own 13th gen HP laptop right now - borked ACPI tables means unpatchable broken sleep on Linux), then it’s pure frustration. Device trees on the other hand are much more binary. Either everything generally works or it doesn’t at all. It’s a valid approach.
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    You can override broken ACPI tables. The keyword to search for is "dsdt". For example, if you have an HP Omen this repo has a fix: https://github.com/j0hnwang/OMEN-Transcend-16-ACPI-fix https://github.com/j0hnwang/OMEN-Transcend-16-ACPI-fix But yes, device trees are far nicer to work with.
  - 10000truths 2y ago
    Flawed implementations of open specs can be worked around with things like quirk tables. A spec held hostage by a non-cooperating vendor cannot. In the world of ARM SoCs, bad vendors won't even provide a device tree, just a binary image compiled from a patched kernel.
- dan-robertson 2y ago
  To be clear, I wasn’t claiming anything about operating systems. Merely that adding many weird instructions was a strategy intel used to try to make the jobs of amd and centaur and suchlike harder.
rldjbpin 2y ago
nobody is a saint on this matter. both parties act the way they do to support their business position. short-term support helps qualcomm sell more because their customers want to sell more phones to the same users. on the other hand, for the industrial partners there is an "LTS" model of support given (side effect being fairphone 5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37320800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37320800). long-term support through backwards compatibility helps intel because they can sell new chips with the assurance that the ancient, unmaintained industrial software continues to run in a shinier box.

knowitnone 2y ago

there's no simplified Linux installer either and every distro creates one and keeps re-inventing it