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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

#321

Post by Androider »

ams6110 wrote: post #293
Androider wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Node and Ruby applications do fail on ARM though, when it comes to native libraries and extensions. And now your whole distro is different than your development machine, which adds complexity. Do I really want to be debugging why node-gyp fails to compile scrypt on the ARM distro on the new Amazon A1 ARM instance (which it did in my case)? And if I solve that, what about the other 2451 dependencies? Let's pessimistic…

> now your whole distro is different than your development machine Can you not develop on an ARM emulator? Or just buy an ARM machine for dev work?

Of course I can, but the question is why would go out of my way to do any of that?

I was interested in trying the state of server-side ARM for my mostly-interpreted language, and I pretty much immediately found that it doesn't Just Work. I had a vision of spending many hours searching, creating and +1:ing GitHub issues and tracking discussions around "why package X doesn't work on ARM" and the developers saying at best "happy to accept patches" (which btw is the mantra for why "why package X doesn't work on Windows", and why you don't want to develop with Node on Windows to this day despite all of Microsoft's ecosystem work). Nope, not worth it.

I'm not interested in supporting ARM just for it's own sake. A 30% discount on the cloud instances is also not nearly enough for me or my team of developers to be spending any significant amount of time on this, solving problems unrelated to our core business.

Let's see again in a few years. Of course, if ARM development machines become mainstream by way of Apple, then the calculation changes completely.

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

#322

Post by vbezhenar »

kstrauser wrote: post #268
mark-r wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you see that his answer has nothing to do with a hacker mindset? It's an assertion that making your development and production environments as close as possible will save you from unexpected grief, coupled with an observation that this has driven server architectures historically. Especially with subtle problems like performance issues. I find it a very sensible conclusion. Of course it didn't hurt that x86 qui…

The NetBSD people vehemently disagree. By ensuring your software works on various architectures, you expose subtle bugs in the ones you actually care about. Lots of 32-bit x86 code was improved during the migration to 64-bit, not because the move created new bugs, as because existing ones (i.e. code that relied on undefined behavior) couldn't get away with it anymore.

Many projects don’t care about subtle bugs. They need to deliver features in time. Bugs are acceptable.

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

#323

Post by mntmoss »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #219
sangnoir wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you are not really disagreeing with Linus - he's not saying ARM is not viable - he is saying it will not win . With your current setup (cross-compiling), are your ARM executables more performant than x86? Or do they have any other advantage at all over x86? Without an advantage, ARM can't possibly win. Having a cheap, viable ARM-native development platform drastically increases the chances of ARM-only k…

He's not saying it won't win, either. He's just saying that for it to win, it needs a viable dev platform. Which, if you reverse cause and effect is blatantly obvious. If ARM comes anywhere close to viable enough to be "winning", there will be a good market for dev platforms, and somebody will step in and fill the need. Heck, some are even arguing here that the Pine64 already meets that need.

I'm definitely on the side of ARM(and RISC-V and other new architectures for that matter) getting "wins", because the modern environment is displaying the signs of a low-layer shakeup:

* New systems languages with promising levels of adoption

* Stablization and commodification of the existing platforms, weakening lock-in effects

* Emphasis on virtualization in contemporary server architectures

* "The browser is the OS" reaching its natural conclusion in the form of WASM, driving web devs towards systems languages

All of that produces an environment where development could become much more portable in a relatively short timeframe. It's the high friction of the full-service, C-based, multitasking development ecosystem that keeps systems development centralized within a few megaprojects like Linux. But what is actually needed for development is leaner than that, and the project of making these lower layers modernized, portable, and available to virtualization will have the inevitable effect of uprooting the tooling from its existing hardware dependencies, even when no one of the resulting environments does "as much" as a Linux box. The classic disruption story.

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

#324

Post by MBCook »

pcwalton wrote: post #308
Androider wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When developing for iOS you typically interact with the iOS simulator on your desktop, which natively compiles your app against x86 versions of the mobile frameworks. True native iOS development is pretty rare, and more painful. Overall, iOS development is a delightful experience because there's a singular hardware target and Apple pretty much nails the execution. For Android development on the other, you don't have…

> When developing for iOS you typically interact with the iOS simulator on your desktop, which natively compiles your app against x86 versions of the mobile frameworks. And the fact that the "develop on x86, test on ARM" workflow works so smoothly on iOS is strong evidence that Linus is wrong.

Is it? Or is it evidence that Apple has worked REALLY DAMN HARD to make it work decently?

I’ve certainly heard of bugs that the simulator doesn’t reproduce because it’s not ARM.

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

#325

Post by ozim »

Androider wrote: post #252
antirez wrote: post #145

It's extremely hard to agree with Linus on that. One problem in his argument is that he believes that everybody has a kernel hacker mindset: most today's developers don't care about environment reproducibility at architecture level. The second problem is that he believes that every kind of development is as platform sensitive as kernel hacking, and he even makes the example of Perl scripts. The reality is that one ye…

Node and Ruby applications do fail on ARM though, when it comes to native libraries and extensions. And now your whole distro is different than your development machine, which adds complexity. Do I really want to be debugging why node-gyp fails to compile scrypt on the ARM distro on the new Amazon A1 ARM instance (which it did in my case)? And if I solve that, what about the other 2451 dependencies? Let's pessimistic…

I don't have production experience with ARM unfortunately but Raspberry Pi is huge... Linux on desktop sucks if you have any laptop or something like this, but specific hardware just like RPi, everything works for my needs. I have node.js, .net core, python and loads of software that just works for me on ARM. Let alone I have Synology with ARM processor. Making servers is a lot easier than making consumer grade laptops or desktops. I agree with Antirez, there is so much space to try out stuff on cheap ARM with RPi and other SBC it just going to roll over x86 because ARM is going to be ubiquitous with phones and SBCs. That is why x86 won with SPARC and PowerPc, it was just in more places.

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

#326

Post by vbezhenar »

013a wrote: post #178
antirez wrote: post #145

It's extremely hard to agree with Linus on that. One problem in his argument is that he believes that everybody has a kernel hacker mindset: most today's developers don't care about environment reproducibility at architecture level. The second problem is that he believes that every kind of development is as platform sensitive as kernel hacking, and he even makes the example of Perl scripts. The reality is that one ye…

It seems likely that, simply, times have changed. There was a time when being on the same platform as the deployment environment was super important, but nowadays the tooling has gotten so much better that it matters a lot less. The proportion of people still writing C code on a day to day basis has dropped... well to pretty much a rounding error. The bigger issue is really that ARM servers aren't that much cheaper t…

I write Java but I seriously doubt that ARM has comparable JVM, it’s probably slow compared to x86. Cross platform in theory, not so much in practice.

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

#327

Post by josephg »

Androider wrote: post #257
Androider wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Node and Ruby applications do fail on ARM though, when it comes to native libraries and extensions. And now your whole distro is different than your development machine, which adds complexity. Do I really want to be debugging why node-gyp fails to compile scrypt on the ARM distro on the new Amazon A1 ARM instance (which it did in my case)? And if I solve that, what about the other 2451 dependencies? Let's pessimistic…

On a related note, if Apple does switch to ARM chips for their laptops, that will make mainstream ARM server-side development more viable than any cross-platform story ever can. Or kill the Mac desktop. One or the other :)

When that happens we’ll also see a big push to add ARM support to all the native nodejs modules that are out there. (And I assume Ruby, Python, Go, etc packages).

Linus’s prediction is based on the premise that everyone will continue to use x86 for development. But that’s probably not going to be the case for long. Multiple sources have leaked the rumour that Apple will release an arm MacBook next year. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft has an arm surface book in the wings too.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/21/apple-custom-arm-based-...

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

#328

Post by Androider »

pcwalton wrote: post #308
Androider wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When developing for iOS you typically interact with the iOS simulator on your desktop, which natively compiles your app against x86 versions of the mobile frameworks. True native iOS development is pretty rare, and more painful. Overall, iOS development is a delightful experience because there's a singular hardware target and Apple pretty much nails the execution. For Android development on the other, you don't have…

> When developing for iOS you typically interact with the iOS simulator on your desktop, which natively compiles your app against x86 versions of the mobile frameworks. And the fact that the "develop on x86, test on ARM" workflow works so smoothly on iOS is strong evidence that Linus is wrong.

Who's going to make the "develop on x86, deploy on server-side ARM" experience smooth? It certainly isn't today. Who has that kind of control of the entire stack top to bottom? Amazon is the only one that comes to mind... but I wouldn't bet on it.

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

#329

Post by [deleted] »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #299
pjc50 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ARM-based Macs are inevitable, although it might be called "iPad Pro Developer Edition". This is Jeff Atwood's argument: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-tablet-turning-point/ ; Apple tablet performance at Javascript is now catching up to and exceeding desktop performance. Apple have also sunk a lot of money into developing their own processor line, and they have experience in force-migrating all their c…

I just wonder if Apple can design laptop chips that perform well (per watt) at 45W TDP or desktop chips at 2-3x that and with multiple sockets. If not, then what’s the point? I won’t move to an ARM Mac, personally. I will move to Windows or Linux on x86 for all the reasons Linus gives and also for games. Sorry, but an ARM Mac may finally push me where crappy keyboards and useless anti-typist touch bars have not quite…

[deleted]

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

#330

Post by vbezhenar »

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…

You don’t have a choice with smartphones. So it’s not very relevant. I will write for Itanium if necessary. But given a choice, x86 wins.
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