4 ms·

This is mostly a recognition of the shared threat that ARM poses to both AMD and Intel. ARM took embedded first, then mobile, then gaming (on mobile and handhe

This is mostly a recognition of the shared threat that ARM poses to both AMD and Intel. ARM took embedded first, then mobile, then gaming (on mobile and handhelds), then Macs, and now it is making real inroads into Windows laptops (e.g. Snapdragon X Elite) and servers (e.g. Graviton.) The next shoe to drop would be a high-end gaming PC that can take an NVIDIA or AMD graphics card powered by a Snapdragon X Elite-like ARM chip. Another shoe to drop would be a super-computer powered by ARM chips instead of x86. I don't think that has happened yet? After that, the last refuge of x86 is in legacy software that hasn't been natively ported to ARM. But there will be fewer and fewer cases of this as the years go by. For now I think it will be mostly games. x86 is under serious threat.

short_sells_poo 2y ago
And here I thought windows on arm was increasingly sliding into irrelevance as nobody is buying it.
Wytwwww 2y ago
> After that, the last refuge of x86 It's not like ARM has taken over those markets yet. Snapdragon X is fine but nothing special compared AMD/Intel chips. I think we just might have a pretty distorted view of ARM vs x86 because of Apple. They are just much better at designing ARM chips than anyone else (including both Qualcomm and especially ARM itself). Servers is kind of a mixed story as well. There is nothing wrong with other companies trying to disrupt AMD/Intel duopoly and hopefully we'll get lower prices and more innovation because of that but calling x86 dead is a bit premature at this point..
- bhouston 2y ago
  > Snapdragon X is fine but nothing special compared AMD/Intel chips. The issue is that ARM is now fine for Windows. Until Snapdragon, ARM was actually pretty crap outside of Apple. This is a huge step. Qualcomm acquired a lot of the original Apple team for the M1 via Nuvia and I expect them to be able to execute at least decently going forward. Apparently they are selling because they have better battery life than Intel/AMD laptops according to this: https://www.techpowerup.com/324301/battery-life-is-driving-sales-of-qualcomm-snapdragon-copilot-pcs-not-ai https://www.techpowerup.com/324301/battery-life-is-driving-s... > Servers is kind of a mixed story as well. Graviton is 30% cheap for the performance (e.g. performance adjusted price.) It is a no brainer for a lot of workflows, especially given so many developers are actually building on ARM machines in the first place. I want my servers to be 30% cheaper. > There is nothing wrong with other companies trying to disrupt AMD/Intel duopoly and hopefully we'll get lower prices and more innovation because of that but calling x86 dead is a bit premature at this point.. Qualcomm is exploring acquiring Intel. A company who got its value from ARM is looking to take over the historic leader in x86 - doesn't that tell you something? https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/qualcomm-approached-intel-about-takeover-recent-days-wsj-reports-2024-09-20/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/qualcomm-approached-in... The writing is on the wall. x86 isn't dead and it won't be dead anytime soon, but it definitely in its twilight period.
  - jtc331 2y ago
    Graviton single thread performance is _not_ the same as the Intel or AMD offerings on AWS.
    - bhouston 2y ago
      Yeah, it seems whatever key improvements Qualcomm did for the Snapdragon X and Apple did for the Mx series haven't made it to the Graviton yet. When I said 30% earlier I was talking about value - my understanding is that Graviton is 30% cheaper once you factor in the performance differences.
      - Wytwwww 2y ago
        > Qualcomm did for the Snapdragon X and Apple did for the Mx series haven't made it to the Graviton yet Why would they, though? Neither Apple nor Qualcomm have any incentives to share their designs with ARM anymore than they do with Intel, AMD or each other. I wonder how AmpereOne will look assuming it actually ever comes out...
        bhouston 2y ago
        > Neither Apple nor Qualcomm have any incentives to share their designs with ARM anymore than they do with Intel, AMD or each other. Techniques leak out as people move around, etc. For example, AMD had a lead on chiplet designs but now Intel has them in the latest generation. I would expect that ARM will have chiplets designs by the end of the decade as well. Look at Anthropic that seems to have an LLM that is on par with OpenAI GPT 4.
        kmeisthax 2y ago
        Funny you say that, because ARM is actually suing Qualcomm specifically over this issue. The Nuvia designs Qualcomm bought were made under an ARM architectural license that specifically restricts all designs sold to only go in servers - not phones, laptops, or anything else. They also weren't allowed to sell the company without destroying the designs first, because Nuvia got a really sweet deal on the architectural license. Qualcomm thinks that doesn't matter, because they have a (much broader) ARM architectural license already - you can't force someone to buy the same license twice, under the principle of rights exhaustion. ARM furthermore has an incentive to keep architectural licensees from competing with ARM's in-house design licensing business. Apple Silicon isn't a threat to that business because Apple will never sell their own components to third-parties. In fact, that's why they hate right-to-repair so much[0]. They're better off licensing ARM patents and having Apple continue to work on LLVM than trying to squeeze them for more money. Qualcomm on the other hand sells phone chips to other companies, and currently spends a lot of money to package ARM's licensed designs into their own SoCs. Nuvia designs going into those phones would be a significant movement of money from ARM's pocket to Qualcomm's. [0] To be specific, in a right-to-repair world where individual components have to be sold at the same pricing arrangements available to the OEM, Apple would not be able to have exclusive parts in their phones that other vendors can't have. Apple can't say this, because it's hilariously self-serving and the general public correctly doesn't give a flying fuck about IP law, but you can infer it from conduct. Apple is perfectly willing to sell you assemblies, of course. Because no vendor is going to buy 100 unrelated parts to get the 1 they care about.
- knowitnone 2y ago
  "It's not like ARM has taken over those markets yet." Key word here is "yet" so you are basically in agreement with their post
- ezst 2y ago
  > I think we just might have a pretty distorted view of ARM vs x86 because of Apple. They are just much better at designing ARM chips than anyone else and those chips become relatively unimpressive once everyone gets access to the same TSMC nodes a year and some down the road with AMD's x86 beating Apple's wonder ARM once again…
tbenst 2y ago
The Nvidia GH200/GB200 “superchips” are all ARM processors. Seems likely that some of the next generation of foundation models will be trained on ARM
jitl 2y ago
At least Apple’s x86-64 on ARM64 emulation is quite fast enough for workstation use. If ARM improvement in both performance and price continue to outpace x86, it may become economically advantageous to run x86 “legacy” software under emulation even in data center environments. So out of high performance computing on x86 I don’t really see legacy software as an advantage in the medium/long term.
jamesaross 2y ago
An ARM supercomputer was already #1 in 2020 [0]. The Japanese Fugaku is also notable because it doesn't use GPUs to achieve high performance, but rather wide vector units on the CPU. [0] https://top500.org/system/179807/ https://top500.org/system/179807/
- knowitnone 2y ago
  I'm sorry but being #1 or even in the top 500 matters very little because most of it is due to how many units are installed in the cluster including networking, memory, architecture, cooling, etc. I mean, if you didn't reach top 500, just add more units into the cluster until you do. Don't get me wrong because there is a lot of tech involved but we are talking about distributed processing instead of the performance and efficiency of a single processor.
klelatti 2y ago
> Another shoe to drop would be a super-computer powered by ARM chips instead of x86. I don't think that has happened yet. Fugaku? https://newsroom.arm.com/blog/fujitsu-a64fx-arm https://newsroom.arm.com/blog/fujitsu-a64fx-arm
- bhouston 2y ago
  Huh. I missed that. That is cool. I wonder if it was cheaper on a FLOP basis to go with ARM versus buying from Intel/AMD? I guess a secondary factor is that it was made of custom/low volume CPUs, which would increase the unit price as compared to the higher volume providers.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    Also, Cray had one using Fujitsu's ARM chips.
mat_epice 2y ago
Arm has been in supercomputers for a while. Astra at Sandia Labs was the first Arm peta-scale supercomputer, and the first on the Top500. It debuted in 2018. Fugaku is the fastest Arm supercomputer, taking the #1 spot on the Top500 in 2020. It is currently #4. All NVIDIA Grace-Hopper systems will be Arm. There is one in the top 10 already, Alps at the Swiss CSCS, at #6. There are four more in the top 100.
- bhouston 2y ago
  > Arm has been in supercomputers for a while. Apparently I am super wrong here. ARM has made serious inroads here as well. I think that ARM's willingness to allow their IP to be customized for their clients needs has really given them a lot of competitive advantages.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - knowitnone 2y ago
    That might be where Intel and AMD failed. With the hindsight watching ARM gobble up a number of sectors, Intel and AMD should have allowed their IP to be customized which may have slowed ARM's advance. Competition is good though. If this continues, AMD and Intel may have to merge. I wonder how RISCV is going to shake things up? Intel and AMD should build RISCV chips and chance ARM. That'll form a nice loop.
    - bhouston 2y ago
      > I wonder how RISCV is going to shake things up? Right now RISC-V is ultra slow in all implementations I've seen. Like 30x slower than a top of the line Apple Mx series CPU. Maybe there is a high performing RISC-V chip out there but I haven't yet run into one. RISC-V benchmarks: https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=RISC-V https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=RISC-V. Compare to an Apple M4 benchmark: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8224953 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8224953 That said, RISC-V is good for embedded applications where raw performance isn't a factor. I think no other markets are yet accessible to RISC-V chips until their performance massively improves.
jvanderbot 2y ago
I'm excited to enter an era of serious competing CPU architectures again!
sorenjan 2y ago
I hope ARM doesn't win. I can run whatever I want on my x86 computer, but for some reason ARM based devices seem to need special device trees and custom drivers. I don't know exactly what the difference is, something about device enumeration at boot I think, but the last thing I want is for my computer to stop receiving update support after a few years like all Android phones. Or needing to use "custom ROMs" instead of just installing an OS.
- not2b 2y ago
  Microsoft forced a lot of uniformity on x86 designs, with standard methods of probing to find all of the buses and devices, while historically ARM devices where embedded and the architecture was arbitrary, which was why you needed device trees. The kernel couldn't figure out the device configuration on its own.
  - bubblesnort 2y ago
    The BIOS on an IBM PC was cloned by Compaq iirc. Back in the day it was normal for software (including OS kernels) to call into BIOS ROMs because storage was limited. This was in a different era where most PCs weren't networked. x86_64 has moved to UEFI and SecureBoot since, but is still mostly expected to boot any live distro you'd like. Replacing x86 could drastically reduce the chances of replacing non-free vendor software with free software.
    - kmeisthax 2y ago
      And to add onto this: pre-ACPI, the IBM PC platform wasn't that far off from, say, any one particular SoC vendor in the ARM ecosystem. In fact, Microsoft originally planned to license out MS-DOS to competing x86 computer vendors using incompatible platforms and firmware[0]. Which is close[1] to the state of non-UEFI/non-PSCI ARM now. It's only because Compaq was able to legally clone the PC and it's BIOS that x86 standardized itself on one platform and firmware. The presence or lack thereof of standardized interfaces for firmware, device configuration, or the underlying platform are orthogonal to issues regarding Secure Boot and trust management. Apple Silicon Macs use nonstandard boot firmware (iBoot) but booting a "fully untrusted OS" (or fuOS) is an explicitly supported[2] use case on them, gated only by the user needing to boot recoveryOS (OTR specifically) once and enter their password to sign the alternative kernel. They even support per-volume boot policies, so you can keep your macOS install fully locked down while your Asahi Linux does whatever you want. And likewise Intel isn't stopping you from building in whatever user-hostile nonsense you want into x86 firmware. There's actually a whole range of laptops that have BIOS rootkits preinstalled, specifically to force-install Computrace onto whatever Windows install gets booted for corporate IT management purposes. The thing is, corporate IT has a terrible habit of leaving this shit on laptops they've sold", either because the laptop was stolen internally or because IT couldn't give a shit to do the computer equivalent of signing the title, so people wind up buying laptops that will lock up and wipe themselves if you ever install Windows on them. [0] The most successful of these being the PC-98, which lasted all the way up until the Windows 9x era [1] ARM SoC vendors additionally commit the crime of not being compatible with themselves. It is common for new SoCs to have completely different memory and device layouts. Apple is the only exception, ironically because they make both the OS and the SoC, which is the one time where such crimes would be excusable. [2] I'm told Apple's original intent was Boot Camp with Windows on ARM, but Microsoft wouldn't license Windows on ARM on Macs because they have an exclusivity deal with Qualcomm.
night862 2y ago
I agree. Especially that last bit. I've thought about this quite a bit since I responded to a commenter who was somewhat was amazed at an ARM supercomputer quite a while ago about this subject. I decided to comment about this a lot more since it is my option to do so. cheers They had posited that ARM would take over, mostly recognizing the very low-power and fairly inexpensive ARM SoC in phone handsets and routers. This thought didn't sit quite right with me. I considered the power requirements and architectural needs of a larger computer system. With many, many PCIe lanes or some other interconnect, rapid storage commitments and the very responsive performance required by a "serious" architecture will cause all of these subsystems to continually draw current and dissipate heat. This is in stark contrast to power efficient computing devices like iPhone or ARM macbooks, and in my mind seems likely to eat the "gains" that people generally associate with these devices. The piece missing in my understanding is about the semiconductor industry and the electronics field in general, and is particularly interesting to me, because many of the highest-tier operators outsource %100~ of their production to TSMC or the other. There isn't anything magic or even very good about x86 architecture. I'm fairly certain the instruction set no longer maps to hardware in most cases, rather more analogous to function calls in typical software applications. Every now and then I like to reflect that iPhone came out in 2007. My car is older than that, and we were well on our way during the election of Barack Obama. And while legends hold that Power still exists, I had long forgotten about ALPHA or SPARC by then. Imagine for yourself this earth-shattering shift: What happens when the basic lithography processes, assembly practices, and validation procedures become such that for similar trade offs, any advanced hobbyist could order a wafer from future fab houses similar to JLPCB, Scaleway, OSH Park, TSMCWAY, or whatever on-demand? Like, what if you could just pay $$$$ to buy a wafer that you designed and then sell 14nm UltraSPARC on tindie?
- bhouston 2y ago
  > I'm fairly certain the instruction set no longer maps to hardware in most cases, rather more analogous to function calls in typical software applications. Yes, I believe this is called micro operations and have been around for a while now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_microcode#P6_and_later_micro-operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_microcode#P6_and_later_m...
RiverCrochet 2y ago
Trivia: - The first game console with an ARM CPU was the 3D0 (1991 - not sure if it was an ARM1 or later version). - The first game console with an Intel CPU was the Magnavox Odyssey 2 with an Intel 8048 (it also had an Intel graphics chip) (1978). - The first game console with an x86 Intel CPU I believe was the FM Towns Marty (I think this is 1992 or 1993 - it had a 386). - The first successful game console with an x86 Intel CPU was the original Xbox (2001 or 2002) - and actually it was an AMD CPU (edit: nope it was an Intel). There were mobile phones with Intel CPUs in them for a short time - I think it was 2010-2011. I always wanted to see one (was like super curious how the boot firmware looked if it was user accessible). I wonder what happened.
- alexjplant 2y ago
  > The first successful game console with an x86 Intel CPU was the original Xbox (2001 or 2002) - and actually it was an AMD CPU. I think it was actually a Pentium III with less cache, i.e. basically a Celeron. Only third-gen Microsoft consoles onward use AMD parts.
  - bhouston 2y ago
    > I think it was actually a Pentium III with less cache, i.e. basically a Celeron. Only third-gen Microsoft consoles onward use AMD parts. Correct according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_III_processors#%22Coppermine-128%22_(180_nm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_III_proc...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

short_sells_poo 2y ago

And here I thought windows on arm was increasingly sliding into irrelevance as nobody is buying it.

Wytwwww 2y ago

> After that, the last refuge of x86 It's not like ARM has taken over those markets yet. Snapdragon X is fine but nothing special compared AMD/Intel chips. I think we just might have a pretty distorted view of ARM vs x86 because of Apple. They are just much better at designing ARM chips than anyone else (including both Qualcomm and especially ARM itself). Servers is kind of a mixed story as well. There is nothing wrong with other companies trying to disrupt AMD/Intel duopoly and hopefully we'll get lower prices and more innovation because of that but calling x86 dead is a bit premature at this point..

bhouston 2y ago
> Snapdragon X is fine but nothing special compared AMD/Intel chips. The issue is that ARM is now fine for Windows. Until Snapdragon, ARM was actually pretty crap outside of Apple. This is a huge step. Qualcomm acquired a lot of the original Apple team for the M1 via Nuvia and I expect them to be able to execute at least decently going forward. Apparently they are selling because they have better battery life than Intel/AMD laptops according to this: https://www.techpowerup.com/324301/battery-life-is-driving-sales-of-qualcomm-snapdragon-copilot-pcs-not-ai https://www.techpowerup.com/324301/battery-life-is-driving-s... > Servers is kind of a mixed story as well. Graviton is 30% cheap for the performance (e.g. performance adjusted price.) It is a no brainer for a lot of workflows, especially given so many developers are actually building on ARM machines in the first place. I want my servers to be 30% cheaper. > There is nothing wrong with other companies trying to disrupt AMD/Intel duopoly and hopefully we'll get lower prices and more innovation because of that but calling x86 dead is a bit premature at this point.. Qualcomm is exploring acquiring Intel. A company who got its value from ARM is looking to take over the historic leader in x86 - doesn't that tell you something? https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/qualcomm-approached-intel-about-takeover-recent-days-wsj-reports-2024-09-20/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/qualcomm-approached-in... The writing is on the wall. x86 isn't dead and it won't be dead anytime soon, but it definitely in its twilight period.
- jtc331 2y ago
  Graviton single thread performance is _not_ the same as the Intel or AMD offerings on AWS.
  - bhouston 2y ago
    Yeah, it seems whatever key improvements Qualcomm did for the Snapdragon X and Apple did for the Mx series haven't made it to the Graviton yet. When I said 30% earlier I was talking about value - my understanding is that Graviton is 30% cheaper once you factor in the performance differences.
    - Wytwwww 2y ago
      > Qualcomm did for the Snapdragon X and Apple did for the Mx series haven't made it to the Graviton yet Why would they, though? Neither Apple nor Qualcomm have any incentives to share their designs with ARM anymore than they do with Intel, AMD or each other. I wonder how AmpereOne will look assuming it actually ever comes out...
      - bhouston 2y ago
        > Neither Apple nor Qualcomm have any incentives to share their designs with ARM anymore than they do with Intel, AMD or each other. Techniques leak out as people move around, etc. For example, AMD had a lead on chiplet designs but now Intel has them in the latest generation. I would expect that ARM will have chiplets designs by the end of the decade as well. Look at Anthropic that seems to have an LLM that is on par with OpenAI GPT 4.
      - kmeisthax 2y ago
        Funny you say that, because ARM is actually suing Qualcomm specifically over this issue. The Nuvia designs Qualcomm bought were made under an ARM architectural license that specifically restricts all designs sold to only go in servers - not phones, laptops, or anything else. They also weren't allowed to sell the company without destroying the designs first, because Nuvia got a really sweet deal on the architectural license. Qualcomm thinks that doesn't matter, because they have a (much broader) ARM architectural license already - you can't force someone to buy the same license twice, under the principle of rights exhaustion. ARM furthermore has an incentive to keep architectural licensees from competing with ARM's in-house design licensing business. Apple Silicon isn't a threat to that business because Apple will never sell their own components to third-parties. In fact, that's why they hate right-to-repair so much[0]. They're better off licensing ARM patents and having Apple continue to work on LLVM than trying to squeeze them for more money. Qualcomm on the other hand sells phone chips to other companies, and currently spends a lot of money to package ARM's licensed designs into their own SoCs. Nuvia designs going into those phones would be a significant movement of money from ARM's pocket to Qualcomm's. [0] To be specific, in a right-to-repair world where individual components have to be sold at the same pricing arrangements available to the OEM, Apple would not be able to have exclusive parts in their phones that other vendors can't have. Apple can't say this, because it's hilariously self-serving and the general public correctly doesn't give a flying fuck about IP law, but you can infer it from conduct. Apple is perfectly willing to sell you assemblies, of course. Because no vendor is going to buy 100 unrelated parts to get the 1 they care about.
knowitnone 2y ago
"It's not like ARM has taken over those markets yet." Key word here is "yet" so you are basically in agreement with their post
ezst 2y ago
> I think we just might have a pretty distorted view of ARM vs x86 because of Apple. They are just much better at designing ARM chips than anyone else and those chips become relatively unimpressive once everyone gets access to the same TSMC nodes a year and some down the road with AMD's x86 beating Apple's wonder ARM once again…

tbenst 2y ago

The Nvidia GH200/GB200 “superchips” are all ARM processors. Seems likely that some of the next generation of foundation models will be trained on ARM

jitl 2y ago

At least Apple’s x86-64 on ARM64 emulation is quite fast enough for workstation use. If ARM improvement in both performance and price continue to outpace x86, it may become economically advantageous to run x86 “legacy” software under emulation even in data center environments. So out of high performance computing on x86 I don’t really see legacy software as an advantage in the medium/long term.

jamesaross 2y ago

An ARM supercomputer was already #1 in 2020 [0]. The Japanese Fugaku is also notable because it doesn't use GPUs to achieve high performance, but rather wide vector units on the CPU. [0] https://top500.org/system/179807/ https://top500.org/system/179807/

knowitnone 2y ago
I'm sorry but being #1 or even in the top 500 matters very little because most of it is due to how many units are installed in the cluster including networking, memory, architecture, cooling, etc. I mean, if you didn't reach top 500, just add more units into the cluster until you do. Don't get me wrong because there is a lot of tech involved but we are talking about distributed processing instead of the performance and efficiency of a single processor.

klelatti 2y ago

> Another shoe to drop would be a super-computer powered by ARM chips instead of x86. I don't think that has happened yet. Fugaku? https://newsroom.arm.com/blog/fujitsu-a64fx-arm https://newsroom.arm.com/blog/fujitsu-a64fx-arm

bhouston 2y ago
Huh. I missed that. That is cool. I wonder if it was cheaper on a FLOP basis to go with ARM versus buying from Intel/AMD? I guess a secondary factor is that it was made of custom/low volume CPUs, which would increase the unit price as compared to the higher volume providers.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Also, Cray had one using Fujitsu's ARM chips.

mat_epice 2y ago

Arm has been in supercomputers for a while. Astra at Sandia Labs was the first Arm peta-scale supercomputer, and the first on the Top500. It debuted in 2018. Fugaku is the fastest Arm supercomputer, taking the #1 spot on the Top500 in 2020. It is currently #4. All NVIDIA Grace-Hopper systems will be Arm. There is one in the top 10 already, Alps at the Swiss CSCS, at #6. There are four more in the top 100.

bhouston 2y ago
> Arm has been in supercomputers for a while. Apparently I am super wrong here. ARM has made serious inroads here as well. I think that ARM's willingness to allow their IP to be customized for their clients needs has really given them a lot of competitive advantages.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- knowitnone 2y ago
  That might be where Intel and AMD failed. With the hindsight watching ARM gobble up a number of sectors, Intel and AMD should have allowed their IP to be customized which may have slowed ARM's advance. Competition is good though. If this continues, AMD and Intel may have to merge. I wonder how RISCV is going to shake things up? Intel and AMD should build RISCV chips and chance ARM. That'll form a nice loop.
  - bhouston 2y ago
    > I wonder how RISCV is going to shake things up? Right now RISC-V is ultra slow in all implementations I've seen. Like 30x slower than a top of the line Apple Mx series CPU. Maybe there is a high performing RISC-V chip out there but I haven't yet run into one. RISC-V benchmarks: https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=RISC-V https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=RISC-V. Compare to an Apple M4 benchmark: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8224953 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8224953 That said, RISC-V is good for embedded applications where raw performance isn't a factor. I think no other markets are yet accessible to RISC-V chips until their performance massively improves.

jvanderbot 2y ago

I'm excited to enter an era of serious competing CPU architectures again!

sorenjan 2y ago

I hope ARM doesn't win. I can run whatever I want on my x86 computer, but for some reason ARM based devices seem to need special device trees and custom drivers. I don't know exactly what the difference is, something about device enumeration at boot I think, but the last thing I want is for my computer to stop receiving update support after a few years like all Android phones. Or needing to use "custom ROMs" instead of just installing an OS.

not2b 2y ago
Microsoft forced a lot of uniformity on x86 designs, with standard methods of probing to find all of the buses and devices, while historically ARM devices where embedded and the architecture was arbitrary, which was why you needed device trees. The kernel couldn't figure out the device configuration on its own.
- bubblesnort 2y ago
  The BIOS on an IBM PC was cloned by Compaq iirc. Back in the day it was normal for software (including OS kernels) to call into BIOS ROMs because storage was limited. This was in a different era where most PCs weren't networked. x86_64 has moved to UEFI and SecureBoot since, but is still mostly expected to boot any live distro you'd like. Replacing x86 could drastically reduce the chances of replacing non-free vendor software with free software.
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    And to add onto this: pre-ACPI, the IBM PC platform wasn't that far off from, say, any one particular SoC vendor in the ARM ecosystem. In fact, Microsoft originally planned to license out MS-DOS to competing x86 computer vendors using incompatible platforms and firmware[0]. Which is close[1] to the state of non-UEFI/non-PSCI ARM now. It's only because Compaq was able to legally clone the PC and it's BIOS that x86 standardized itself on one platform and firmware. The presence or lack thereof of standardized interfaces for firmware, device configuration, or the underlying platform are orthogonal to issues regarding Secure Boot and trust management. Apple Silicon Macs use nonstandard boot firmware (iBoot) but booting a "fully untrusted OS" (or fuOS) is an explicitly supported[2] use case on them, gated only by the user needing to boot recoveryOS (OTR specifically) once and enter their password to sign the alternative kernel. They even support per-volume boot policies, so you can keep your macOS install fully locked down while your Asahi Linux does whatever you want. And likewise Intel isn't stopping you from building in whatever user-hostile nonsense you want into x86 firmware. There's actually a whole range of laptops that have BIOS rootkits preinstalled, specifically to force-install Computrace onto whatever Windows install gets booted for corporate IT management purposes. The thing is, corporate IT has a terrible habit of leaving this shit on laptops they've sold", either because the laptop was stolen internally or because IT couldn't give a shit to do the computer equivalent of signing the title, so people wind up buying laptops that will lock up and wipe themselves if you ever install Windows on them. [0] The most successful of these being the PC-98, which lasted all the way up until the Windows 9x era [1] ARM SoC vendors additionally commit the crime of not being compatible with themselves. It is common for new SoCs to have completely different memory and device layouts. Apple is the only exception, ironically because they make both the OS and the SoC, which is the one time where such crimes would be excusable. [2] I'm told Apple's original intent was Boot Camp with Windows on ARM, but Microsoft wouldn't license Windows on ARM on Macs because they have an exclusivity deal with Qualcomm.

night862 2y ago

I agree. Especially that last bit. I've thought about this quite a bit since I responded to a commenter who was somewhat was amazed at an ARM supercomputer quite a while ago about this subject. I decided to comment about this a lot more since it is my option to do so. cheers They had posited that ARM would take over, mostly recognizing the very low-power and fairly inexpensive ARM SoC in phone handsets and routers. This thought didn't sit quite right with me. I considered the power requirements and architectural needs of a larger computer system. With many, many PCIe lanes or some other interconnect, rapid storage commitments and the very responsive performance required by a "serious" architecture will cause all of these subsystems to continually draw current and dissipate heat. This is in stark contrast to power efficient computing devices like iPhone or ARM macbooks, and in my mind seems likely to eat the "gains" that people generally associate with these devices. The piece missing in my understanding is about the semiconductor industry and the electronics field in general, and is particularly interesting to me, because many of the highest-tier operators outsource %100~ of their production to TSMC or the other. There isn't anything magic or even very good about x86 architecture. I'm fairly certain the instruction set no longer maps to hardware in most cases, rather more analogous to function calls in typical software applications. Every now and then I like to reflect that iPhone came out in 2007. My car is older than that, and we were well on our way during the election of Barack Obama. And while legends hold that Power still exists, I had long forgotten about ALPHA or SPARC by then. Imagine for yourself this earth-shattering shift: What happens when the basic lithography processes, assembly practices, and validation procedures become such that for similar trade offs, any advanced hobbyist could order a wafer from future fab houses similar to JLPCB, Scaleway, OSH Park, TSMCWAY, or whatever on-demand? Like, what if you could just pay $$$$ to buy a wafer that you designed and then sell 14nm UltraSPARC on tindie?

bhouston 2y ago
> I'm fairly certain the instruction set no longer maps to hardware in most cases, rather more analogous to function calls in typical software applications. Yes, I believe this is called micro operations and have been around for a while now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_microcode#P6_and_later_micro-operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_microcode#P6_and_later_m...

RiverCrochet 2y ago

Trivia: - The first game console with an ARM CPU was the 3D0 (1991 - not sure if it was an ARM1 or later version). - The first game console with an Intel CPU was the Magnavox Odyssey 2 with an Intel 8048 (it also had an Intel graphics chip) (1978). - The first game console with an x86 Intel CPU I believe was the FM Towns Marty (I think this is 1992 or 1993 - it had a 386). - The first successful game console with an x86 Intel CPU was the original Xbox (2001 or 2002) - and actually it was an AMD CPU (edit: nope it was an Intel). There were mobile phones with Intel CPUs in them for a short time - I think it was 2010-2011. I always wanted to see one (was like super curious how the boot firmware looked if it was user accessible). I wonder what happened.

alexjplant 2y ago
> The first successful game console with an x86 Intel CPU was the original Xbox (2001 or 2002) - and actually it was an AMD CPU. I think it was actually a Pentium III with less cache, i.e. basically a Celeron. Only third-gen Microsoft consoles onward use AMD parts.
- bhouston 2y ago
  > I think it was actually a Pentium III with less cache, i.e. basically a Celeron. Only third-gen Microsoft consoles onward use AMD parts. Correct according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_III_processors#%22Coppermine-128%22_(180_nm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_III_proc...

deleted 2y ago

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