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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

#341

Post by mullingitover »

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 :)

I consider myself a pretty average Mac user, and I've already been turned off by the last couple rounds of Macs that Apple has shipped. Messing up the one remaining upside, x86 compatibility, would be be the straw that broke the camel's back. They still only have single digit market share in desktop computing, this could be the death blow for their platform.

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

#342

Post by pcwalton »

MBCook wrote: post #324
pcwalton wrote: post #308

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. 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.

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

And that isn't enough to get people to demand an ARM emulator. In fact, Android developers hate the ARM emulator and prefer the x86 simulator—more evidence against Linus' assertion.

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

#343

Post by miohtama »

In early 2000 Java promised to be write once, everywhere. By the time it was between Windows and Sun.

20 years later we have finally reached this point for business applications, be them in Java, Python, PHP or some other VM based SDK.

The mainstream development future is in Lambdas and other such containerised technologies. If you can run Docker or similar "home" you can also deploy. Our DevOps models have radically changed and not sure if he realises this.

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

#344

Post by jzl »

gwbas1c wrote: post #281

> and how stupid your argument is Didn't Linus recently go to sensitivity training or something? I think he missed out on the bigger picture. It seems like his argument is more about shaming anyone who disagrees with him, instead of expressing an opinion.

Was about to say the same thing. Seems like he's slipped right back into his long-established form of discourse. It's always entertaining to read, I'll say that much.

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

#346

Post by kllrnohj »

Androider wrote: post #300
musicale wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I can pretty much guarantee that as long as everybody does cross-development, the platform won't be all that stable. Or successful." iOS seems like a huge counterexample (as you note.)

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…

> For Android development on the other, you don't have a good simulator, and the out-of-the-box dev experience relies on an x86 emulator of the ARM environment. In practice this means that in your day-to-day Android development, you're running the compile-run-test cycle by looking at your actual ARM device all the time, because the emulator is dogshit. I wouldn't really call it cross-platform development in any traditional sense, it's more like remote development, and a bad experience.

This hasn't been true for years. The emulator shipping with Adroid Studio uses an x86-based image, and it's very, very fast as a result.

Android's emulator even has quite a few more features than iOS's simulator, such as mock camera scenes so you can even develop apps that rely on the camera on the emulator.

If anything these days the Android emulator soundly trumps the iOS simulator on all interesting metrics except maybe RAM usage. But, critically to Linus' argument, they both use the same architecture as the development machine.

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

#347

Post by nfriedly »

blinkingled wrote: post #333

He didn't even discuss the every ARM board being a snow flake needing its own BSP, custom bootloader, OS distro etc. I am fine with x86 being successful - there are good reasons for it. I don't get why there's this ARM push in the PC and servers market. It's not making anything better.

Yea, ARM really needs some standardization around that area.

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

#348

Post by zackbloom »

I have a fundamental question. Do people think the move towards 'serverless', this desire for some percentage of developers to not have to worry all that much about the low level infrastructure their code is running on) to die? To accelerate?

It seems somewhat clear that some percentage of developers are interested in a fundamentally higher abstraction than what operating systems have classically provided. In a world where that's true for not just a small few but for most developers, it seems that something like processor architecture could be abstrated away. It's not like it's particularly easy to replicate serverless deployment environments on developer machines today, and yet it persists.

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

#350

Post by ZiiS »

vbezhenar wrote: post #326
013a wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Remembers Jazelle DBX with a wry smile.
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