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

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

#121

Post by pjc50 »

_underfl0w_ wrote: post #85
scraft wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing, but answering the question of are all phones ARM: no, there Intel too. Source: had to add Intel build support for our Android SKUs to run on said phones. Some Unity stats from about 6 months ago indicated: ARMv7: 98.1% Intel x86: 1.7% I think a lot of the Intel stuff has been discontinued, not sure what is actively being developed outside of ARM right now.

This is strange. Maybe like a Windows phone? Where does it get those device metrics? < 2% makes me think it might just be that Androidx86 emulator project.

I have an Asus Zenfone 2, complete with its "Intel Inside" logo. Not particularly special but when I bought it met the critera of "gorilla glass + pokemon go for below $150". Nice case too.

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

#122

Post by swiley »

flohofwoe wrote: post #69
xoa wrote: post #33

It's of course impossible not to respect Linus' opinion and first hand experience in this space, but doesn't this whole post completely ignore the 100 ton blue whale in the room? Namely smartphones . That's an entire enormous segment of the industry and it's nearly 100% (or entirely 100%?) literally develop-on-x86-deploy-on-ARM. Smartphones also fit > "This isn't rocket science. This isn't some made up story. This is…

Smartphones are a good argument for both views IMHO. Native development (as in native machine code executables) on Android is still a terrible experience even though they had a decade to fix it. It's much better on Apple platforms, maybe because they actually cared about developer-experience and native code is a "first class citizen" there. It goes beyond the different instruction set of course and most of the time t…

Native development sucking on android is mostly an android problem (and to some extent a Qualcomm problem since their smartphone SOCs don’t support anything else.)

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

#123

Post by pjc50 »

deng wrote: post #47
disiplus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but with smartphones you don't have a choice. so it's different.

> but with smartphones you don't have a choice. so it's different. Exactly. Linus' point is that Arm has no real advantage in the server space to compensate for the problems with cross-development. That's completely different for smartphones, which is why Arm won that space.

When Apple replace Intel with ARM in their laptops, that goes away too.

(See my argument elsewhere in this thread)

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

#124

Post by gok »

Native development is interesting to kernel developers much more so than the average server software developer.

Most server code is CPU architecture independent, and largely operating system independent. It's written in Python, Java, JavaScript, C#, PHP. Most of it is also already cross-developed on macOS or Windows, then deployed on Linux. The fact that all 3 run x86 doesn't make this much easier. Increasingly it's also targeting server-specialized hardware that isn't practical to carry with you (8 GPUs won't fit in a laptop, and Google won't even let buy their TPUs)

If CPU-native development is important, that's actually a good sign for ARM servers. Laptops and desktops are increasingly going to be ARM powered over the next few years.

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

#125

Post by swiley »

pjc50 wrote: post #117
chongli wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When "mobile" and "PC" gets merged I don't see this happening. PCs are tools for getting real work done. Mobiles are mostly communication and entertainment devices. I like to fall back on this Steve Jobs quote, employing a car/truck metaphor for computers: When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that's what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars go…

> Mobiles are mostly communication Communication is also work, especially as you go up the management value chain. I think maybe people should refer to the thing that PCs do and mobiles don't as "typing".

It’s definitely a different kind of work.

In general, smartphone software is built to discourage creative work and focus on either reading or communicating.

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

#126

Post by AstralStorm »

deng wrote: post #71
mtgx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably the strongest counter-argument. New generations will learn programming on Arm and RISC-V (whether it's something like an iPad or a Raspberry Pi). Linus very much sounds like a grumpy old man saying "get off of my lawn!" (as he usually does).

Well, it's difficult to not get grumpy when you hear the same promises for many years. It's not like "ARM for servers" is something new. The exact same things were already promised over a decade ago, and somehow, it never really came to pass. And I think his reasons are spot on: aside from very specific workloads, it just did not make sense to buy ARM-based servers. They were usually not much cheaper, and they usuall…

Exactly. Modern X86-64 chips got improved power saving, more cores to increase density at reduced power cost, much more powerful GPU for running compute.

Plus, server space buyers are conservative, they want support of a big company behind their hardware. Someone the size of Cisco, Dell or HP. Or hardware that is used by Google or Microsoft.

Combine that with anticompetitive long term agreements and you get the picture.

Somehow network routers have a variety of architectures inside and nobody has a problem - because they have a bunch of reputable companies behind each of them. (Variants of MIPS, ARM, ARM64 and x86 are in the wild.)

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

#128

Post by rat9988 »

titzer wrote: post #89
jeremyjh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why having a compilation target that works the same way everywhere would be so valuable. We're some ways away from this, but I think WebAssembly offers hope here. Why does WebAssembly offer more hope than the JVM, or interpreted languages that we already have? It will still have to interop with native libraries to get work done.

It's lower level than the JVM and more of an abstraction over hardware. So native libraries can be compiled directly into it, so everything can interop on top of Wasm.

>>more of an abstraction over hardware

Same can be said for jvm.

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

#129

Post by porpoisely »

titzer wrote: post #98
porpoisely wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Let passionate people on all sides have their say. I think it's more toxic to stifle passionate people. It's amazing how everyone from Steve Jobs to Bill Gates to Linus Torvalds is labeled as "toxic" and yet the "toxic" environment they created led to substantial advancements. And poisoning the well ( or any ad hominem derivatives ) doesn't stop discussion, it generally leads to more discussions - though…

> 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 o…

When we are talking about toxic, I think we all understood it meant behavior. And the point of community guidelines isn't to make it the community more inclusive, it's actually to make it more exclusive. Limiting speech and thoughts are exclusive behaviors, not inclusive ones. But I'm all for HN or any other platform having guidelines.

I studied philosophy in college so I don't need an explanation of what poisoning the well is. "Poisoning the well" itself is poisoning the well and I don't want to get into the intricacies of ad hominems and logical fallacies. Many times, people misunderstand logical fallacies and use logical fallacies themselves to stifle debate.

Also, Linus wasn't having an argument or a debate. He was giving his opinion. He is allowed to say someone's argument is stupid : "how stupid your argument is.". He didn't call people stupid, he called the argument stupid.

Finally, ad hominems may or may not stifle discussion from the passionless or people who don't care about the topic, but it never stifles discussion from passionate people or people who care about a topic. Every major debate - going back to religious debates or debates about science or debates about slavery or debates about civil rights or anything else was "passionate". Can you imagine these debates being shut down because that's not what "polite company discusses"?

And why would it matter whether you virtue signal anonymously or not? You are already anonymous as HN is thankfully an anonymous forum. One thing HN is fairly good about ( as far as I know ) is anonymity.

I don't believe in ad hominems or attacking people. But if people want to use harsh language to express ideas they are passionate about, I say go for it. The same goes for you. You seem passionate about the subject and I support your right to express it in whatever manner you choose. What I find ironic is that under the aegis of "inclusivity and encouraging discussion", you are advocating for exclusion and stifling Linux Torvalds' speech. But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Certainly, you can see that you are doing precisely what you claim Torvalds is doing - stifling speech ( or at least advocating for it ).

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

#130

Post by pjc50 »

deng wrote: post #16
amq wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if there is nothing to develop for... Chicken and egg problem. However, I think that Windows on ARM will soon become a real thing, this could bring the developers, it will also help the ARM devices spread among Linux users. Regarding what Linus wrote, I do not buy it. There is so much stuff can run without cross-compilation: js and other scripts, java, c#. Also look at things like Android and iOS, you are already…

> However, I think that Windows on ARM will soon become a real thing, this could bring the developers, it will also help the ARM devices spread among Linux users. Windows an ARM has been a real thing for years, and it is horrible. Nobody in his right mind would use this for development.

Only because Microsoft deliberately chose to cripple it, a decision which they are gradually reversing.
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