Linus Torvalds on Why ARM Won't Win the Server Space

It'd be great if Sun had a Niagara box priced like a PC when that chip was first launched. I bet our software would be running much better on multicore machines today. Maybe languages such as Rust would have been created sooner.

I remember joking that writing code for the Xeon Phi would be useful because that was probably what a Core i15 would look like. Now we have Xeon Platinums with similar core/thread counts, but only on the very high end while 8-thread machines are mainstream with 12 being seemingly the next step.

On ARM we have something interesting with the asymmetric cores, something Intel has only hinted they plan to pursue. Some tasks can go to slower cores that sip power while others may be better suited to beefy cores that can do speculative execution on deep pipelines and that could heat a small house.

Very unlikely. "My way or the highway" is ingrained in their corporate DNA. Can't think of an attitude less suited for server side work where optimization to custom workloads makes massive cost difference

No. It's unlikely that they'd be able to anyway - products (like, say, a Macbook Pro or ThinkPad) get targeted at developers. RISC-V is an instruction architecture, which gets used by a chip designer, which gets sold to a computer manufacturer, who does the actual marketing to end users, so they're about 4 links removed up the value chain.

What they should do is make RISC-V useful for computing at the edge - applying computation to areas where it's previously been infeasible (eg. smartwatches, wearables, RFID, drones, vehicles, etc). Developers go where the end users are. If a new end-user market opens up that suddenly needs a lot of software, developers will buy the same ISA that their customers are using. And then there will be strong pressure to run the other software that developers write (eg. servers, as Linus notes) on the same ISA to prevent cross-development.

> It's amazing how everyone from Steve Jobs to Bill Gates to Linus Torvalds is labeled as "toxic"

To be clear, there is a difference between toxic people and toxic behaviors. The former, I think, doesn't exist. There are people who often engage in toxic behavior, and those who do rarely. Pointing out toxic behavior is the first step to correcting it. And correcting it is in fact the goal of community guidelines, in order to establish a more inclusive culture.

> Let passionate people on all sides have their say. I think it's more toxic to stifle passionate people.

Let's be clear about what "toxic" means, and not let it degenerate to "loud and I don't like it." Toxic means that it actively damages open discussion, drives people away, and kills off conversations. It is the same sense as a toxic substance; kills.

> And poisoning the well ( or any ad hominem derivatives ) doesn't stop discussion, it generally leads to more discussions

Ok this is manifestly untrue. Please read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well). Poisoning the well is a form of preemptive insult to discourage opponents from taking a position by making it seem toxic. The fallacy is aptly named.

> what you are doing could be viewed as a form of shaming

Yep! I am happy to shame toxic behavior when it is clear.

> and virtue signaling

Maybe. I'd be happy to do it anonymously if you would prefer.

> And at the end of the day, if you don't like linus's style of communication, you don't have to read or listen to it.

This is the very definition of suppressing conversation: sending people away who don't feel like putting up with insults. It's counterproductive and unnecessary.

> I don't understand the mentality of "I don't like it so you should change".

This isn't some he-said she-said situation. I am pointing out direct unprovoked insults designed to stifle discussion and establish a particular point of view. As I have made it abundantly clear, I find this completely unnecessary and I pointed it out because I really think we can stop doing this if we're just consistent about it. We'll have better discussions with more diverse viewpoints, not just hotheads shouting at each other.

Let passionate people be passionate, but there is no reason to accept immature and toxic behavior. I won't answer the rest, because I believe your opinion is stupid :)