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ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

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Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#231

Post by N1H1L »

ryandvm wrote: post #82
octorian wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time Microsoft or Apple majorly screws something up, people say this. It still hasn't happened yet. However, I think Apple has been a far greater threat to Linux adoption than Microsoft. Why? Because it gives techies the *nix environment they want, with the software and hardware support no one will give them on Linux. There is real value in proprietary commercial end-user application software. Most companies wh…

> Because it gives techies the *nix environment they want, with the software and hardware support no one will give them on Linux. The UNIX experience on the Mac is pretty shitty. Ancient versions of all the tooling. Command-line utils have that weird BSD well-water flavor. No package management. Funny Docker quirks. The hardware used to be pretty nice, but honestly I'm still having trouble forgiving them for getting…

> The UNIX experience on the Mac is pretty shitty. Ancient versions of all the tooling. Command-line utils have that weird BSD well-water flavor. No package management. Funny Docker quirks.

Very, very true. And Homebrew is actively becoming worse now. A few years back, Homebrew was great - now using it feels like using some weird underground software stack that exists only because Apple hasn't come around to nixing it yet.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#232

Post by klelatti »

sudosysgen wrote: post #216
klelatti wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Closed ARM? Is there any suggestion that the architecture that Apple is using is any different to what is being used by lots and lots of other licensees? If not then it's much more open than x86. If you mean that you can't buy an ARM CPU today to plug into your own motherboard then understood but that's probably now a matter of time. At least making such a CPU is possible - no-one is going to make x86 more open.

x86 is already relatively open, there's more than four companies developing x86 chips, though for now they are mostly focused on very low power outside of Intel and AMD. There is no indication that I'll ever be able to buy an ARM CPU and plug it into motherboard with the feature set I choose and plug into it peripherals that follow a standard and open interface with good performance. The only companies that make ARM…

ARM has 250 licensees for application processors with 8 licensees (including AMD and Nvidia) who can develop their own architectures around the 64 bit ARM instruction set.

You can buy socketed ARM CPUs today that are likely to be more than fast enough - from Marvell for example.

You're 100 % right that there isn't an ARM ecosystem at the moment in the way that there is a PC ecosystem with all its flexibility.

But that's not a feature of the ARM architecture or what ARM as a company does - it's because x86 has historically dominated the desktop.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#233

Post by cwhiz »

mister_hn wrote: post #141
timsally wrote: post #41

It is very likely that ARM-based Macs will lack a performant hypervisor upon release. We will have to see how VMWare responds. I'd bet it will inspire new products and innovation and the desktop space will move towards a less x86-x64 centric world. In the end it is a short term problem. Someone will respond and provide a performant hypervisor that can run on an ARM host and virtualize x86-x64 and ARM guests. It's tru…

With just less than 10% of market share, do you really think it will change the whole thing? Unless Microsoft pushes for ARM too, I don't see any changes soon

Microsoft has been dabbling with ARM for a long time now.

It will all come down to whether this move gives Apple a significant performance and/or battery life advantage. If Apple pulls it off it will force Microsoft and other vendors to respond.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#234

Post by beagle3 »

binarynate wrote: post #202

The loss of Boot Camp is huge. One of the reasons I develop on a Mac is so that I can use a single machine for all development (including macOS, iOS, and Windows development). Most of the time, developing for Windows on Parallels works fine, but there are some cases where it's necessary to boot directly into Windows to test or debug adequately. I hope Apple is able to reach an agreement with Microsoft or at least con…

It will ship Intel based laptops for at least a couple more years (at the very least, the models that will already be out at the switch), and will support them for a lot more; so just buy the best intel based once following the switch, and it will last you 4-5 more years.

But also: Getting a cloud windows station or an el-cheapo-$500-under-the-desk-when-you-really-need-it Windows machine is probably worth it if you're doing professional work. It would quickly cost much less than the time you lose when rebooting to the the other OS, from my experience.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#235

Post by pjmlp »

anthk wrote: post #122
pjmlp wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Microsoft had been more serious regarding POSIX personality, Linux would never had taken off. Most devs only want some kind of CLI and POSIX like capabilities.

You forgot X11 and Motif. Without that Windows would be useless back in the day.

Not really, because there were plenty of Win32 X Servers.

Back in the day I was using Hummingbird.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#236

Post by 013a »

I'd say that I'm excited for ARM. That doesn't mean the transition will be seamless or easy.

I know that a big complaint about the move is "great, now I'm doing ARM locally and deploying to x86". I think this is a legitimate concern, for now, but I also strongly believe it is inevitable that, within the next decade, deploying to x86 in the Cloud will be as "weird" as ARM would be today. The benefits are way too numerous.

Well, more accurately, I think it'll be a "I'm on Fargate, oh wow, Fargate runs on ARM, I had no idea" kind of thing. Ok, the article outlines why you may need some idea, but come on; we're talking about one line where I'm downloading the x86 version of a dependency instead of an ARM version. That's an easy fix.

I don't know what this means for open accessibility of hardware. Right now, I could go buy and run locally the Intel Xeon chip powering my app in the cloud; when things move to ARM, it absolutely will be "AWS Graviton" (not sold outside AWS) or "Azure ARM Whatever" (not sold outside Azure). This sucks for accessibility, but, actually, does it? ARM enables the cloud providers to do this; they could never design their own x86 chips. As long as we're all standardized on the same ISA, and the chips generally have the same characteristics, I'm looking forward to a very bright future where vendors are now also competing against one-another in the silicon. And I may not be able to buy an AWS Graviton, but I'm sure (well, hopeful) that one day I'll be able to build an ARM desktop that isn't a Raspberry Pi. AWS will have their chips, Quallcomm has theirs, Apple has theirs, Microsoft and Google have some, and they're all competing against one another.

Ok, maybe this is a pipe dream. But, I'm definitely in the short Intel camp, at least on the long-term.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#237

Post by klelatti »

013a wrote: post #236

I'd say that I'm excited for ARM. That doesn't mean the transition will be seamless or easy. I know that a big complaint about the move is "great, now I'm doing ARM locally and deploying to x86". I think this is a legitimate concern, for now, but I also strongly believe it is inevitable that, within the next decade, deploying to x86 in the Cloud will be as "weird" as ARM would be today. The benefits are way too numer…

This touches on an interesting question which I think underlying some of the concerns here today: Who will build ARM chips comparable to an i7 say that I can go out and buy and plug into my machine at home?

No-one does now and it's not obvious who would as we speak today. But if the demand is there then even with lots of obstacles to overcome, of course, then they can and will.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#238

Post by smspf »

klelatti wrote: post #237
013a wrote: post #236

I'd say that I'm excited for ARM. That doesn't mean the transition will be seamless or easy. I know that a big complaint about the move is "great, now I'm doing ARM locally and deploying to x86". I think this is a legitimate concern, for now, but I also strongly believe it is inevitable that, within the next decade, deploying to x86 in the Cloud will be as "weird" as ARM would be today. The benefits are way too numer…

This touches on an interesting question which I think underlying some of the concerns here today: Who will build ARM chips comparable to an i7 say that I can go out and buy and plug into my machine at home? No-one does now and it's not obvious who would as we speak today. But if the demand is there then even with lots of obstacles to overcome, of course, then they can and will.

Not sure about the socket used (it might be soldered down), but aarch64-based workstations are already available for the general public, e.g. [1].

[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15737/arm-development-for-the...

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#239

Post by sudosysgen »

klelatti wrote: post #232
sudosysgen wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

x86 is already relatively open, there's more than four companies developing x86 chips, though for now they are mostly focused on very low power outside of Intel and AMD. There is no indication that I'll ever be able to buy an ARM CPU and plug it into motherboard with the feature set I choose and plug into it peripherals that follow a standard and open interface with good performance. The only companies that make ARM…

ARM has 250 licensees for application processors with 8 licensees (including AMD and Nvidia) who can develop their own architectures around the 64 bit ARM instruction set. You can buy socketed ARM CPUs today that are likely to be more than fast enough - from Marvell for example. You're 100 % right that there isn't an ARM ecosystem at the moment in the way that there is a PC ecosystem with all its flexibility. But tha…

There's only about two ARM licensees that can even come close to desktop tier performance. The instruction set doesn't matter if only one company can make a fast enough CPU, using a massive number proprietary changes to the original architecture.

When we'll have three ARM companies making socketed CPUs with standardized I/O between them that are faster or very close to AMD or Intel, then it will be good.

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