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Tales of the M1 GPU

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Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#161

Post by nsxwolf »

ronbarr wrote: post #150
Waterluvian wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not a fair comparison in some ways but this reminds me of that story of Woz making a disk drive controller with far fewer chips by being clever and thoughtful about it all. I’m probably misremembering this.

You’re talking about the Integrated Woz Machine. It was a custom disk controller that Wozniak created that was used in the Apple ][, /// and I believe on the original Macs. It was cheap, fast and worked.

The Integrated Woz Machine was the custom single-chip version of the Apple II floppy controller.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#162

Post by cromwellian »

ansible wrote: post #117
babypuncher wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't even that new of a thing. The floppy disk drive sold for the Commodore 64 included it's own 6502 CPU, ROM, and RAM. This ran its own disk operating system[1]. Clever programmers would upload their own code to the disk drive to get faster read/writes, pack data more densely on the disk, and even copy protection schemes that could validate the authenticity of a floppy. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commod…

And all that engineering resulted in a floppy drive that was slower and more expensive than comparable units for other home computers. I'm not sure if there is a lesson there...

The 1541 was slow because the c64’s serial bus was slow. Data was clocked over the bus 1 bit at a time. Various fastloaders sped up the data rate by reusing the clock line itself as a data line (2 bits at a time), later HW adapters adder parallel port or even usb to overcome the serial bus bottleneck.

Basically commodore was gonna use an ieee-488 bus for the drive and then decided it was too expensive late in the design and switched to this hacks serial bus that bottlenecked everything.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#163

Post by gburdell3 »

anxiously wrote: post #154
dimator wrote: post #28

watching a virtual persona stream their development of their M1 GPU drivers is one of the most cyberpunk things I've ever seen! it's easy to forget that this world is looking closer and closer to those dreamed up by Gibson, Stephenson, etc. what a time to be alive.

Can someone explain this vtoon trend to me? It doesn't seem to be driven by anonymity because their real name is easily findable, so I assume it's something else? It seems very common, especially in certain communities.

Some people just prefer their public persona to be in the form of an avatar instead of their real face. They want to have something there to represent themselves instead of just streaming a screen and nothing else, but they would rather that representation be an avatar or character rather than their physical selves.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#164

Post by GekkePrutser »

helf wrote: post #57

The fact so much hardware these days is running a full real-time OS all the time annoys me. I know it is normal and understandable but everything is such a black box and it has already caused headaches (looking at you, Intel).

The real-time nature is not what makes it closed though. It's simply that it's been designed to be closed.

For example, Intel's ME could be a really useful feature if we could do what we want with it. Instead they lock it down so it's just built-in spyware.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#165

Post by GekkePrutser »

dist1ll wrote: post #92
est31 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think making it harder to build an OS by increasing its scope is not going to help people to build Linux alternatives. As for the components, at least their interfaces are standardized. You can remove memory sticks by manufacturer A and replace them with memory sticks from manufacturer B without problem. Same goes for SATA SSDs or mice or keyboards. Note that I'm all in favour of creating OSS firmware for devices,…

Building an OS is hard. There's no way around its complexity. But closing your eyes and pretending everything is a file is a security disaster waiting to happen (actually, happening every day). And furthermore, OS research is not only about building Linux alternatives. There are a lot of operating systems that have a much narrower focus than full-blown multi-tenant GPOS. So building holistic systems with a narrower f…

> But closing your eyes and pretending everything is a file is a security disaster waiting to happen (actually, happening every day).

How so? I can see the limited access control in Linux is an issue, and for this reason augmented security MAC (Mandatory Access Control) controls exist like SELinux and AppArmor.

But I don't see how the nature of everything being a file is a vulnerability in itself.

I'd be happy to learn how though.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#166

Post by the__alchemist »

helf wrote: post #57

The fact so much hardware these days is running a full real-time OS all the time annoys me. I know it is normal and understandable but everything is such a black box and it has already caused headaches (looking at you, Intel).

Same. It's not about the principle, but that generally these OSes increase latency etc. There's so much you can do with interrupts, DMA, and targetted code when performance is a priority.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#167

Post by Gigachad »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #164
helf wrote: post #57

The fact so much hardware these days is running a full real-time OS all the time annoys me. I know it is normal and understandable but everything is such a black box and it has already caused headaches (looking at you, Intel).

The real-time nature is not what makes it closed though. It's simply that it's been designed to be closed. For example, Intel's ME could be a really useful feature if we could do what we want with it. Instead they lock it down so it's just built-in spyware.

Isn’t the primary purpose of the ME to run DRM and back door the system? How would it be useful at all open source? People would just turn it off entirely.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#168

Post by GekkePrutser »

ActorNightly wrote: post #131
segmondy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what Zuck is trying to get us all into with the Meta, but the world is not ready yet.

Same thing was said about full touch screen iphones circa 2007. VR/AR just hasn't been done right as of now, but its getting close. Demand is there. Imagine virtual schooling during time like Covid, but instead of Zoom, kids actually see each other in VR and can interact with each other.

Yeah it's pretty great, though I hope it won't be leveraged to reduce physical presence in social settings. The real world is still the place to be when possible, but it would be great not having to fly across the world for face to face meetings. Teams is just not good enough. VR might eventually become so.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#169

Post by Eleison23 »

ansible wrote: post #117
babypuncher wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't even that new of a thing. The floppy disk drive sold for the Commodore 64 included it's own 6502 CPU, ROM, and RAM. This ran its own disk operating system[1]. Clever programmers would upload their own code to the disk drive to get faster read/writes, pack data more densely on the disk, and even copy protection schemes that could validate the authenticity of a floppy. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commod…

And all that engineering resulted in a floppy drive that was slower and more expensive than comparable units for other home computers. I'm not sure if there is a lesson there...

The 1541 was set to be a highly capable and performant machine, but an interface/design bug held it back and delivered dismal performance whenever connected to the C64. They tried to fix it but it couldn't be rescued, so speed freaks needed to wait for the 1570 series.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#170

Post by Gigachad »

segmondy wrote: post #102
cjsawyer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opinions around facebook’s metaverse are hilarious when things like Second Life, WoW, EVE, VR Chat, and even Roblox have been so massively popular yet unrecognized for what they are.

The difference between Facebooks Meta and other worlds is the difference between getting a billion+ people into the same virtual world. How big is Second Life? or Roblox?

Facebook is going to struggle to get a billion people on to their website/app soon. I really don’t see this many people wanting to use a shitty VR chat app.
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