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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

#391

Post by jecxjo »

ozim wrote: post #325
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…

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 lapto…

I ran Pis at home for a bunch of services and I agree it did a great job. But when you put actual loads on it the device craters because they are so under powered. This is where THE issue is going to be. To get speeds you expect out of server hardware its not just about making a 64 core ARM. Single Core ARM vs Single Core x86 has an obvious winner. So you need to make node and .net core and python and everyone else really push their limits on using multiple cores without developers knowing about it.

But that is just the first step. You then need developers who write applications on top of those languages be multi-core aware and design their applications to fully use the huge number of cores. At that point you'll loose a lot of your power efficiency because you'll need a lot more hardware running to do the same tasks. You'll also need developers who know how to think in an extremely multi-core way to get the extra performance boost.

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

#392

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

#393

Post by MaxBarraclough »

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.

My understanding is that there's a pretty good proprietary JVM for ARM (optimising JIT and all), but that the FOSS stuff (including OpenJDK) is well behind, and as you say, can be expected to perform nowhere near as well as the AMD64 counterpart.

> Cross platform in theory, not so much in practice.

Optimistic that the OpenJDK folks would rise to the challenge if there was anything to play for. Writing a serious optimising JIT for modern ARM CPUs would doubtless be no small task, but wouldn't be breaking the mould. I believe it's a similar situation for RISC-V, currently.

Googles But wait, there's more! 'Graal'! Shiny new JIT engines are on the way, and ARM support is in there. Hopefully they'll perform well. [0] [1]

[0] https://github.com/oracle/graal/issues/632

[1] https://github.com/oracle/graal/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3A...

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

#394

Post by kllrnohj »

pjmlp wrote: post #386
kllrnohj wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they allow nearly everything for regular Android apps since libc lets you access nearly every syscall. Nothing was meaningfully "clamped down" there. You can't directly syscall some obsolete syscalls anymore, and you can't syscall random numbers, but nearly any actual real syscall is still accessible and nothing indicates that it won't be. As long as libc can do it so can you, since you & libc are in the same…

Android uses bionic.

Yes, and..? Bionic is Android's libc. libc is just the name of the C standard library, not any particularly C standard library.

You might be confused and thinking of glibc, which is a particular libc implementation.

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

#395

Post by pjmlp »

kazinator wrote: post #387
pjmlp wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I left C++ for managed languages, it was when the OS became irrelevant to me, with FFI being the only occasions where it still matters. As you mention lambdas take it to the next level, and in such future Linux might not even matter anymore, hence his point of view.

When I left C++ for managed languages, operating systems and C didn't stop being relevant; what stopped being relevant for me was the grotesque extensions of C dialect desperately trying to be a high level, managed language in increasingly irrational ways.

C++ is still the best tool when my managed languages need some extra native help.

Maybe it will be eventually replaced by Rust one day on my toolbox, but surely not for C.

I left that in 1993, only using it instead of C++ when university professors required me to do so, and on my first job (until they also moved into C++/C#).

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

#396

Post by agumonkey »

kstrauser wrote: post #334
supermatt wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NetBSD (and NetBSD code) is used pretty much everywhere. The internet pretty much runs on it.

That might be a bit oversold. I love the BSDs, but I'd think by now that Linux in all its forms would surely heavily outweigh NetBSD by now.

I would love to read a recent survey. If someone knows about that.

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

#397

Post by makapuf »

wtracy wrote: post #355
supermatt wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NetBSD (and NetBSD code) is used pretty much everywhere. The internet pretty much runs on it.

I couldn't name a major corporation that uses NetBSD on their servers or routers. (Yahoo used to use FreeBSD servers, but even they migrated to Linux.) Is there a major router vendor or something else that uses NetBSD in a big way?

Well at least Netflix does. https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/netflix_freebsd/

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

#398

Post by MaxBarraclough »

rkangel wrote: post #86
sitkack wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus is mostly wrong except for HPC. Very few dev pipelines for folks result in native executables. The vast majority of code is delivered as either source (python, ruby, etc) or bytcode, JVM, Scalia, etc. And the Xeon class machines folks deploy to in data center envs is a world apart from their MacBooks. These truths are true for Linus, but not for the majority of devs. Even those creating native binaries, this is…

He calls that out though "even if you're only running perl scripts". It's not the cross-compilation that's a factor, it's wanting the environment to be as similar as possible. Even if your code is Java bytecode, that's still running on a different build of the JVM, on a different build of the OS (possibly a different OS). There is opportunity for different errors to crop up. They might be rare, but they'll be surpris…

The question then is how successful the JVM is. I think you're underestimating it. Torvalds' attitude is certainly justified regarding plenty of other types of software though -- just building a C++ project on a different distro can be a pain.

Someone else [0] points out that Java (in the right context at least) is so successful in isolating the developer from the underlying platform, that it isn't a problem if the developer isn't even permitted to know what OS/hardware their code will run on.

Could they accidentally write code that depends on some quirk of the underlying platform? I think it's not that likely. Nowhere near as likely as in C/C++, where portability is a considerable uphill battle that takes skill and attention on the part of the developer.

> They might be rare, but they'll be surprising and costly when they happen exactly because of that.

Ok, but you can say the same for routine software updates. It's a question of degree.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229224

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

#399

Post by sasavilic »

jdietrich wrote: post #371
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's extremely hard to agree with Linus on that. It's very easy to disagree with him, because the server market doesn't work the way he think it does. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook collectively purchased 31% of all the servers sold in 2018. The market for server hardware is dominated by a handful of hyperscale operators. The "long tail" is made up of a few dozen companies like SAP, Oracle, Alibaba and Tence…

All of this will be useless, if there is no customers that are interested in new platform. There is a big difference between making existing used platform more efficient and offering new efficient platform for which only few customers are interested.

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

#400

Post by throw2016 »

Its like Linus, Stallman and others create a free public pool where before only restricted private pools existed.

Now 20 years later the private pools have faded into the background and the public pool is a lake but its inhabitants are disconnected from the past, only vaguely aware of the era of private pools and couldn't care less how the public pool came to exist. Their reality takes for granted this huge public pool's existance on which they can build and sail their boats, so Linus's arguments are unlikely to resonate.

Users will gladly wade into a private pool this time by cloud providers and that suits closed vendors like Arm who maintain tight platform control - billions of phone socs with zero open drivers - just fine. It's like every generation has to make the same mistakes and go through the same cycle of pain or it slips generational memory.

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