Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1 • Hacker News Board

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#111

Post by webmobdev » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:04 PM UTC

keyle wrote: post #92

supermatt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just started getting into macOS and iOS development and the documentation is HORRENDOUS. Even the classroom educational material Apple put out is incomplete, outdated, and often completely wrong! Additionally, It seems to be impossible to compile anything in Xcode other than a hello-world without gettting undocumented warnings and (non fatal) errors logged, which, if you can find a matching thread on their forums,…

No it wasn't always this bad. The speed at which Swift has changed has left the documentation behind. I've complained about this numerous times. Simply put, if you want useful doco don't look at the latest version of the language. They literally stripped the useful notes and examples and it's now a straight API print out. If you use stackoverflow (sarcasm) be prepared to constantly be using older versions of swift an…

Good documentation will come. Apple's current priority right now is converting macOS to a closed OS like iOS. Once this is done, Apple can advertise the fact how "easy" it is to build apps for both ios and macOS with one codebase. Apple will then taut "courage" as they force all Apple developers to switch to Swift if they want to develop on their ecosystem. You will ofcourse have to pay them for this privilege, and that ofcourse is the end goal.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#112

Post by userbinator » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #34

ur-whale wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the bigger picture Apple aren't really documenting anything for their new toys, This should not come as a surprise, it has always been Apple's default stance. Apple has been, is, and will very likely always be a closed ecosystem. They might sometimes appear or pretend to be open, but it's essentially good PR/marketing (e.g. stash Unix underneath a closed-source stack, call yourself open source and proceed to lure…

I think it’s more a sign of the times than Apple being Apple that they don’t tell you what hardware you buy when you buy one of their systems or how it is connected. Television manuals used to contain hardware schematics, car manuals used to be way more detailed, etc. Apple also had detailed info on their hardware. The Apple II reference manual had schematics, mapped it to the PCB, described what each part did, descr…

The keyword being had, but Apple has always been on the more closed side --- Inside Macintosh was far more pretty but overall less informative than the corresponding IBM PC Technical Reference books.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#113

Post by jitl » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:11 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #34

ur-whale wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the bigger picture Apple aren't really documenting anything for their new toys, This should not come as a surprise, it has always been Apple's default stance. Apple has been, is, and will very likely always be a closed ecosystem. They might sometimes appear or pretend to be open, but it's essentially good PR/marketing (e.g. stash Unix underneath a closed-source stack, call yourself open source and proceed to lure…

I think it’s more a sign of the times than Apple being Apple that they don’t tell you what hardware you buy when you buy one of their systems or how it is connected. Television manuals used to contain hardware schematics, car manuals used to be way more detailed, etc. Apple also had detailed info on their hardware. The Apple II reference manual had schematics, mapped it to the PCB, described what each part did, descr…

The Apple II was useless on arrival unless you could program it yourself. The iPhone is useful for 99% of customers while providing no on-device programming. Weird analogy.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#114

Post by userbinator » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:11 PM UTC

calo_star wrote: post #82

mhh__ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the bigger picture Apple aren't really documenting anything for their new toys, which is not the end of the world but is a huge step back for openness. There is - as far as I can see - no long-form documentation for M1 other than patents. I already refuse to own apple products so I don't really have any skin in the game, but consider that if microsoft were like this the blind eye would not be turned - buy our new…

This really isn't new. It looks like instead of treating the "Neural Engine" as an I/O device like the GPU, it's accessed as a coprocessor. It makes sense for them to only expose their functionalities through libraries as the underlying hardware implementation will go through changes in the future. After all, does, say, Nvidia, document their GPU's ISA?

nVidia is notoriously closed, a better example would be AMD/ATI --- which do have a lot of docs on their GPUs:

https://developer.amd.com/resources/developer-guides-manuals...

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#115

Post by kelnos » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

legulere wrote: post #106

rgovostes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be absurd. LLVM was a research project until Apple hired Chris Lattner and poured money into it to make a viable alternative to GCC. They've been among the project's top contributors (financially and in terms of code) for 15 years. That's quite the long con. Apple creates plenty of proprietary technologies but I can't think of a time they've been credibly accused of crushing an open technology that already exis…

CUPS is the closest where you could accuse Apple of doing that I guess.

... and in the CUPS case I could see it more of a situation where they wanted good printing support, saw that unix printing was a horrible mess, but that CUPS had promise, decided to bring it in-house in order to make it work well on macOS, and then after that was done, stopped really caring about it all that much.

Because printing is just so unsexy in general, and tends to get neglected everywhere.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#116

Post by webmobdev » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:15 PM UTC

EricE wrote: post #65

mhh__ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the bigger picture Apple aren't really documenting anything for their new toys, which is not the end of the world but is a huge step back for openness. There is - as far as I can see - no long-form documentation for M1 other than patents. I already refuse to own apple products so I don't really have any skin in the game, but consider that if microsoft were like this the blind eye would not be turned - buy our new…

Or maybe different people have different needs and don’t care if every device is “open”. The vast majority of people are not enamored with technology for technologies sake. These are tools. Does the tool do what I want with the least amount of friction? That’s what they care about. Also how does Apples stance on one product in any way change the device you are using to post in any way? Are Apple thugs coming to your…

> Or maybe different people have different needs and don’t care if every device is “open”

And that is exactly the point you miss.

You are happy and don't care if Apple is open or not. Good for you.

Some of us are not.

And if you do not care whether Apple is open or not, what does it really matter to you if some of us advocate for more openness and transparency from them? It's important to us.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#117

Post by userbinator » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:17 PM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #47

bitwize wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a third-party developer's perspective the ISA will be Swift. The actual CPU ISA will be a closely guarded trade secret. It will, however, run Swift code 2-3x faster (on a single-core basis) than any commercially available commodity CPU -- especially since Apple pays silicon fabs to not manufacture 3nm hypercubic gallium-arsenide ICs or whatever the cutting edge is on behalf of competitors.

I assume this is satire.

No, I think it is very prescient --- the same way almost no one believed RMS a few decades ago and thought he was crazy. But it's clear where things are heading with Apple.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#118

Post by mhh__ » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:21 PM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #84

calo_star wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really isn't new. It looks like instead of treating the "Neural Engine" as an I/O device like the GPU, it's accessed as a coprocessor. It makes sense for them to only expose their functionalities through libraries as the underlying hardware implementation will go through changes in the future. After all, does, say, Nvidia, document their GPU's ISA?

Yes. Not as much as the average CPU but still documented: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-ampere-architecture...

https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-doc Also here as well

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#119

Post by rgovostes » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #110

rgovostes wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely believe that the investment in LLVM was justified to executives as a way to avoid GPL-licensed software, which Apple has long been allergic to. But it should be noted that the GPL violation you refer to was in 1989. Put in context, that was ~16 years before they started investing in LLVM, and they have done so continuously for the past ~15 years.

Ultimately what the executives think is the reason is the real reason, as we saw from Oravle reproprietizing Solaris. And yes, it was a while back that literally lawyers had to get involved in their blatant GPL violation in the compiler space. We absolutely get to judge a company on it's past actions.

> We absolutely get to judge a company on it's past actions.

I wholeheartedly agree with that statement, but you are judging a company based on the actions of another company it acquired 7 years later.

Re: Undocumented arm64 ISA extension present on the Apple M1

#120

Post by kelnos » Mon, Dec 28, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #78

retaeelppa wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you're done frolicking in the garden, tech outside can use some help. ICS and CUPS are a testament to how strange Apple is as a company. See also: libimobiledevice.org I hold that they're hands-down the worst company at marketing.

Speaking of the garden, what garden!? iOS devices have had a file system users can at least save and retrieve from for years now. The mobile app landscape has changed from the gold rush early last decade, and I rarely install anybody's. I empathize with the developers still trying to make it there, but its not a user's problem. The protocols that Apple chooses to promulgate work really well. Flagship games work reall…

If all that works for you, that's mostly fine, and for the most part I don't think you should feel like you have to defend yourself. But two things:

1) Not all of us are like that. Admittedly I'm very far in the other camp: I run Linux as a desktop OS, and have done so for most of the past 20 years. For much of that I even ran Linux on Apple hardware (because I really did love their hardware), but a few years ago finally gave up due to the increasing frequency of undocumented things that don't work. But there are many of us (less extreme than I am, who would otherwise be content to run macOS and iOS) who absolutely do not buy in to a world where they don't truly own their devices.

2) There's a pervasive worry around here that Apple's approach will catch on, the end result being that full control over your own hardware and software will be a near impossibility. (Or, you'll be able to have it, but then be denied access to things like streaming media, and government and financial apps, a trade off people shouldn't have to make.) I think that's a very real possibility in the longer term, and I think the end result of that is total surveillance and a world where corporations decide what we're allowed to do with technology. And I think for this reason there can be a bit of hostility toward people such as yourself who are happy in the Apple walled garden and seem unconcerned about the future implications of this kind of computing model.

As an aside, I also reject the idea that it's necessary that the user give up agency over their devices in order to be protected from malware. A walled garden -- no matter how far away the walls are -- is not a requirement to keep bad stuff out.