4 ms·

Thanks kinda how Japan works. Inventing something new is hard, but taking something that's a cool idea and making it actually usable is well within their wheelh

by qmarchi 16d ago

Thanks kinda how Japan works. Inventing something new is hard, but taking something that's a cool idea and making it actually usable is well within their wheelhouse. See: - Blue LEDs - Quartz Watches - Lithium-ion Batteries - Bidets

whizzter 16d ago
I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff invented in Japan, but that's really beside the point. The industry is now mature enough that nobody really wants the headache of a new architecture at this point in time, Risc-V got a pass for being a grassroots movement growing out off FPGA's since the IP situation was more or less clear or even predatory with all existing architectures, Power, Sparc,SuperH,68k,etc are buried for good reasons.
- 6SixTy 16d ago
  UC Berkeley developed RISC-V, so no doubt their influence within the computer science academia sphere had something to do with it.
  - whizzter 15d ago
    Dunno, I think Risc-V's simplicity gave it the initial popularity rush rather than being from a certain institution (the institution perhaps gave it visibility, but it does have own merits and no idea if other archs from the time had those?), don't remembere exactly but iirc it was possible to implement with a ridiculously small amount of FPGA gates. Conversly heard some rumblings that it had parts t hat were unsuitable for scaling up but it seems to have gained enough momentum for people to engineer past stuff like that.
- mghackerlady 15d ago
  Powers not dead yet! IBM is still clinging to it and I can't blame them, it's a pretty good ISA
  - FlowingRiver 15d ago
    Yep, I have said it for a good 20 years now. POWER/PowerPC is what happens when you take a brilliant design to execute it poorly. x86 is when you take a poor design and execute is brilliantly.
    - whizzter 15d ago
      PPC could have any number of merits, the 2 nail in the coffin imho is that the community/implementations seems to have held on to a big-endian tradition whilst the mass of users/developers firmly shifted to little-endian when Apple went to x86 and that IBM didn't push it properly open in the 2005-2008 timeframe when PS3/Xbox360 were still relevant (OpenPower seems to have been created in 2013, after the creation of Risc-V and PS4/XboxOne going to x86).
    - anthk 15d ago
      PPC was great with the G4, it was much better than the P3. Intel with P3 based-Core Duos won against the G5.
      - whizzter 14d ago
        Core solo/duo was the last in the P3 heritage (but that heritage itself traced all the way back to the Pentium Pro initially) via the 2 generations of Pentium-M (even if Core2 had parts they were 64bit so more of a major upgrade). Whoever convinced the execs at Intel to put Pentium-M into production as a "mobile" chip really saved them when NetBurst reached it's end of line, I owned a first-generation Pentium-M laptop and it was really superb (seeing the Macbook Air introduced was a big meh). It was really a turning point though, I remember posting some compile time and people didn't believe me, but the Pentium-M chips were good at compiling (since compilers are kinda "branchy" when it comes to execution in a way P4 didn't "like") but also because I had maxed out the RAM on the machine (1.25gb when 256mb was the base for the machine and similar for many desktops) so much of the code and libraries could be retained in disk caches. With portable performance like that, why do you need a desktop?
- FlowingRiver 15d ago
  POWER is still holding on just barely but I do suspect that IBM are looking to sunset it in the next few years.
  - pezezin 15d ago
    Given that IBM just announced a dual-ISA mainframe with support for both z/arch and ARM, they might indeed be looking to sunset POWER.
SoftTalker 16d ago
I had this idea that Fujitsu was one of those Japanese conglomerates that had operations in all kinds of markets, from electronics to heavy earth moving equipment to air conditioners to locomotives. But that doesn't appear to be the case so I'm wondering which company I'm confusing them with. Edit I think I was thinking of Mitsubishi.
- sam1714 15d ago
  Fujitsu is basically the Japanese IBM.
  - myrandomcomment 15d ago
    I am in tech (okay now I am really wondering what % of people on here are NOT in tech). I have spent years in Japan for work, and ironically right now as I type this, I am sitting in a seat on JL2 from Tokyo to SFO. I worked with all of the large Japanese companies over the years and I can say Fujitsu has always been the most impressive, and to you comment, most like golden age IBM (I worked there for a brief time also). They, like IBM are most likely to have brilliant tech, and then shoot themself in the head for non-tech reasons.
- numpad0 15d ago
  Fujitsu was a telco equipment spinoff from Fuji Electric, so Fujitsu do/did make a lot of things that would be in a phone exchange building over its history, from air conditioners to terminals to actual mainframes. Just not as everything as Mitsubishi, which was a do-all procurement company for the new government when the Tokugawa stepped down.
  - FlowingRiver 15d ago
    About 25 years back here in Australia they were advertising Fujitsu air-conditioners, they had the promise of some like "They will get the air down to 17c in all conditions." About a month later there was a summer heat wave and I went to a friends house who had just bought one. It was wild walking in from a 45c day into, as advertised, a 17c house. Had to give it to them, they lived up to the claim. That they come from the telecom/server space, it makes sense they had a good eye for aircon engineering.
deleted 15d ago
[deleted]
antonvs 15d ago
The 1980s called, it wants its stereotypes back.

by qmarchi 16d ago

whizzter 16d ago

I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff invented in Japan, but that's really beside the point. The industry is now mature enough that nobody really wants the headache of a new architecture at this point in time, Risc-V got a pass for being a grassroots movement growing out off FPGA's since the IP situation was more or less clear or even predatory with all existing architectures, Power, Sparc,SuperH,68k,etc are buried for good reasons.

6SixTy 16d ago
UC Berkeley developed RISC-V, so no doubt their influence within the computer science academia sphere had something to do with it.
- whizzter 15d ago
  Dunno, I think Risc-V's simplicity gave it the initial popularity rush rather than being from a certain institution (the institution perhaps gave it visibility, but it does have own merits and no idea if other archs from the time had those?), don't remembere exactly but iirc it was possible to implement with a ridiculously small amount of FPGA gates. Conversly heard some rumblings that it had parts t hat were unsuitable for scaling up but it seems to have gained enough momentum for people to engineer past stuff like that.
mghackerlady 15d ago
Powers not dead yet! IBM is still clinging to it and I can't blame them, it's a pretty good ISA
- FlowingRiver 15d ago
  Yep, I have said it for a good 20 years now. POWER/PowerPC is what happens when you take a brilliant design to execute it poorly. x86 is when you take a poor design and execute is brilliantly.
  - whizzter 15d ago
    PPC could have any number of merits, the 2 nail in the coffin imho is that the community/implementations seems to have held on to a big-endian tradition whilst the mass of users/developers firmly shifted to little-endian when Apple went to x86 and that IBM didn't push it properly open in the 2005-2008 timeframe when PS3/Xbox360 were still relevant (OpenPower seems to have been created in 2013, after the creation of Risc-V and PS4/XboxOne going to x86).
  - anthk 15d ago
    PPC was great with the G4, it was much better than the P3. Intel with P3 based-Core Duos won against the G5.
    - whizzter 14d ago
      Core solo/duo was the last in the P3 heritage (but that heritage itself traced all the way back to the Pentium Pro initially) via the 2 generations of Pentium-M (even if Core2 had parts they were 64bit so more of a major upgrade). Whoever convinced the execs at Intel to put Pentium-M into production as a "mobile" chip really saved them when NetBurst reached it's end of line, I owned a first-generation Pentium-M laptop and it was really superb (seeing the Macbook Air introduced was a big meh). It was really a turning point though, I remember posting some compile time and people didn't believe me, but the Pentium-M chips were good at compiling (since compilers are kinda "branchy" when it comes to execution in a way P4 didn't "like") but also because I had maxed out the RAM on the machine (1.25gb when 256mb was the base for the machine and similar for many desktops) so much of the code and libraries could be retained in disk caches. With portable performance like that, why do you need a desktop?
FlowingRiver 15d ago
POWER is still holding on just barely but I do suspect that IBM are looking to sunset it in the next few years.
- pezezin 15d ago
  Given that IBM just announced a dual-ISA mainframe with support for both z/arch and ARM, they might indeed be looking to sunset POWER.

SoftTalker 16d ago

I had this idea that Fujitsu was one of those Japanese conglomerates that had operations in all kinds of markets, from electronics to heavy earth moving equipment to air conditioners to locomotives. But that doesn't appear to be the case so I'm wondering which company I'm confusing them with. Edit I think I was thinking of Mitsubishi.

sam1714 15d ago
Fujitsu is basically the Japanese IBM.
- myrandomcomment 15d ago
  I am in tech (okay now I am really wondering what % of people on here are NOT in tech). I have spent years in Japan for work, and ironically right now as I type this, I am sitting in a seat on JL2 from Tokyo to SFO. I worked with all of the large Japanese companies over the years and I can say Fujitsu has always been the most impressive, and to you comment, most like golden age IBM (I worked there for a brief time also). They, like IBM are most likely to have brilliant tech, and then shoot themself in the head for non-tech reasons.
numpad0 15d ago
Fujitsu was a telco equipment spinoff from Fuji Electric, so Fujitsu do/did make a lot of things that would be in a phone exchange building over its history, from air conditioners to terminals to actual mainframes. Just not as everything as Mitsubishi, which was a do-all procurement company for the new government when the Tokugawa stepped down.
- FlowingRiver 15d ago
  About 25 years back here in Australia they were advertising Fujitsu air-conditioners, they had the promise of some like "They will get the air down to 17c in all conditions." About a month later there was a summer heat wave and I went to a friends house who had just bought one. It was wild walking in from a 45c day into, as advertised, a 17c house. Had to give it to them, they lived up to the claim. That they come from the telecom/server space, it makes sense they had a good eye for aircon engineering.

deleted 15d ago

[deleted]

antonvs 15d ago

The 1980s called, it wants its stereotypes back.