Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ARM64 Linux Workstation

jasoneckert.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 493 posts

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#111

Post by sliken »

bogwog wrote: post #84
sliken wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the cost for 10x the memory bandwidth of the Ryzen 7950x.

Nope, that's the cost of a monopoly. However fast or special Apple's RAM is, it doesn't cost them 10x the price of the competition, it costs us that because we can't around shop for another supplier.

It does cost quite a bit more though. Otherwise everyone would ship 1k bit wide memory interfaces instead of 128 bit wide.

Just look at the premium AMD and Intel charge for 256 bit wide memory, let alone 1024 bit wide. Xeon servers have 512 bit wide memory, AMD Epycs in the newest gen have 768. Apple's unique in having a 1024 bit wide memory interface, at least among commodity hardware.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#112

Post by zozbot234 »

smoldesu wrote: post #69
TacticalCoder wrote: post #61

Are these ARM64 Mac using ECC? P.S: the 3440x1440 screenshot in TFA looks gorgeous on my system. Everything is using subpixel AA (terminals, code editor, browser, except for the URL, for whatever reason) but not the file manager. I wonder why that is.

> but not the file manager. I wonder why that is. It's documented: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787

So that's what happens when you use 3D rendering approaches for 2D text and line drawings. That's too bad. Hopefully we can come up with better approaches to using the GPU's compute hardware for this stuff. Pixel-correct rendering is not a trivial concern;

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#113

Post by nicce »

poolopolopolo wrote: post #100
sliken wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends, whats the GPU on the 7950x?

I dont think gpu power is relevant for people installing linux on their m1/2 as long as it can play youtube at 4k.

Not yet but maybe soon https://old.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/10prw2c/stable_...

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#114

Post by [deleted] »

smoldesu wrote: post #69
TacticalCoder wrote: post #61

Are these ARM64 Mac using ECC? P.S: the 3440x1440 screenshot in TFA looks gorgeous on my system. Everything is using subpixel AA (terminals, code editor, browser, except for the URL, for whatever reason) but not the file manager. I wonder why that is.

> but not the file manager. I wonder why that is. It's documented: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787

[deleted]

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#116

Post by sliken »

poolopolopolo wrote: post #100
sliken wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends, whats the GPU on the 7950x?

I dont think gpu power is relevant for people installing linux on their m1/2 as long as it can play youtube at 4k.

Light gaming seems common, asahi linux streams have have minecraft, tux racer, mario kart, and related. Seems like a fair amount of ML (both inference and training) going on. PyTouch now works with CPU, GPU, and AMX (via metal), and seen some posts on using the neural to achieve a 7x improvement over the GPUs, but not upstreamed yet. One bonus is the GPU (and AMX) can access all memory, not just the 8-16GB that's common on GPUs these days.

I'm not a heavy gamer, but having some 3D is nice. I'd likely buy a 7900 (non-x) or 7800X3D if buying now, but not going to spend $800 and up for current gen GPUs, maybe get a 3060 or 3060 Ti. The Mac Studio is looking pretty promising, hopefully it's refreshed with the M2 CPUs RSN.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#117

Post by nicce »

pxc wrote: post #102
nicce wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran all my stuff inside non-root non-volume container so prebuilt binary it is not really a problem. I used QEMU through Podman machine in the end, but the performance is terrible. Even on MacOS side QEMU does not support Rosetta 2. Docker for Desktop supports and gives significant boost, but I don’t want to use it.

> Even on MacOS side QEMU does not support Rosetta 2. Is Rosetta 2 that much faster than QEMU's own translation? Why?

QEMU makes translation in Just-in-Time. Rosetta ”pre-builds” binaries to match different architecture, and binaries eventually run ”natively”, with the cost of delayed start.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#118

Post by goosedragons »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #74
jjtheblunt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and audio and screen brightness at least...those don't work on my M2 setup.

> and audio... Overall tip for anyone using Linux and having issues with audio... USB Audio is magical and works wonder. I never bother with the computer's in-board sound: it's USB Audio immediately through a DAC. Works fine. Apple sells $10 USB-C-to-3.5mmjack DAC which are basically a tiny cable (for anyone lamenting it's "too bulky" to have a full-on DAC next to their laptop). For desktops: problem doesn't even reg…

I've been doing this to get my computers connected to a KVM to share speakers. Works pretty well, bought a Soundblaster for nostalgia sake.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#119

Post by silisili »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #44
silisili wrote: post #11

That's really impressive! That said, I really wish someone other than Apple would release something like an ARM64 NUC, with good Linux compat. Even something on par with the SD Gen 2 should be plenty to run a desktop day to day.

I'm not trying to invalidate your specific use case, but in general, there's not really any practical difference between ARM64 and x86 for desktop use. ARM is generally perceived as being more power efficient, but the latest x86 mobile processors from AMD (and probably also Intel) are very efficient. The Apple M series does have very tightly coupled RAM and onboard ML & video encode accelerators, but when it comes to…

Just a tinkerer - no real specific use case. I also have a UM690 that I'm using as my primary desktop, pretty sweet little machine.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#120

Post by mdaniel »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #44
silisili wrote: post #11

That's really impressive! That said, I really wish someone other than Apple would release something like an ARM64 NUC, with good Linux compat. Even something on par with the SD Gen 2 should be plenty to run a desktop day to day.

I'm not trying to invalidate your specific use case, but in general, there's not really any practical difference between ARM64 and x86 for desktop use. ARM is generally perceived as being more power efficient, but the latest x86 mobile processors from AMD (and probably also Intel) are very efficient. The Apple M series does have very tightly coupled RAM and onboard ML & video encode accelerators, but when it comes to…

> in general, there's not really any practical difference between ARM64 and x86 for desktop use

... provided everything you and your team does is 100% on the web, otherwise if you're a normal dev shop building and consuming docker images then you'll chase innumerable reports of "well, on my machine I can't use docker.io/example/thingy:1.0 I had to use docker.io/eleeetz-safe-4-sure/thingy:0.33.05beta-arm64"

Thus, it would be better if the whole company were on the same CPU and since there's no longer any prayer of amd64 macOS ... we Linuxers have to capitulate

Post reply on HN