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Tales of the M1 GPU

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Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#231

Post by helf »

babypuncher wrote: post #106
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).

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…

Oh I know it’s been a thing forever. Hell, my NeXT Cube with its NeXTDimension display board was such. The NeXTDimension board ran its own entire stripped down OS. It used an Intel i860 and a Mach kernel…. It also was massively underutilized. If NeXT had did a bit more leg work and made the actual Display PS server run entirely on the board it would have been insane. But the 68K still did everything.

… I miss my NeXTs..

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#232

Post by p_l »

jbverschoor wrote: post #183
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).

I sometimes wonder about how fast tings could go if we ditch the firmware, and also just bake a kernel / os right into the silicon. Not like all the subsystems which run their own os/kernels, but really just cut every layer, and have nothing in between.

You'd find yourself needing to add more CPUs to account for all the low level handling that is done by various coprocessors for you, eating into your compute budget, especially with high interrupt ratio as you wouldn't have it abstracted and batched in the now missing coprocessors

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#233

Post by teddyh »

javajosh wrote: post #215
maegul wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I like the idea. IMO, we lost something when it became normal/expected to link our real-life self to our internet selves. We arguable gained some unpleasant things too (thinking of Facebook here). A persistent avatar/alias as an internet persona seems to match the real-life to internet-life relationship better. IE, for many, they’re different and rather separable aspects of life.

There was a Black Mirror episode that makes plain the downside of a virtual representation: it can be taken from you and manipulated by someone else. The persona becomes a sale-able commodity, and can be separated from your control.

With deep fakes, this is already also true of your non-virtual representation.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#234

Post by sbuk »

chris_wot wrote: post #213
sbuk wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been long established. marcan_42 has repeatedly posted about this here, on twitter and reddit to name a few locations.

It might be "long established" but plenty of people didn't know this, including me.

No post body was provided.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#235

Post by spartanatreyu »

javajosh wrote: post #215
maegul wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I like the idea. IMO, we lost something when it became normal/expected to link our real-life self to our internet selves. We arguable gained some unpleasant things too (thinking of Facebook here). A persistent avatar/alias as an internet persona seems to match the real-life to internet-life relationship better. IE, for many, they’re different and rather separable aspects of life.

There was a Black Mirror episode that makes plain the downside of a virtual representation: it can be taken from you and manipulated by someone else. The persona becomes a sale-able commodity, and can be separated from your control.

I remember hearing that this exact thing happened a few years ago in either Japan or South Korea.

There was a talent agency that had three-four performers who took shifts streaming games through a shared vtuber persona who had build up some popularity. At some point the agency fired the performers and replaced them with a new performer who didn't have the same performance.

The fans weren't told but it was immediately apparent, so they started demanding the changes to be reverted. The fans were ignored and both the vtuber's popularity and the agency fell back into obscurity.

I guess the lesson here is that personas are personal.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#236

Post by novok »

LeonM wrote: post #228
anxiously wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In case of Marcan/Lina I got the impression that he created Lina just for fun. It started as an April fools joke (Lina 'took over' Marcan's live stream), but Marcan seems to enjoy it a lot, even going so far as contributing to the Inochi2D software (used to render Lina) to improve all sorts of facial features. I don't have the impression that in Marcan's case it was ever about anonymity, it is more about a creative e…

Oh I didn't realize that is what was happening. This makes all the HN commentary around it even funnier.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#237

Post by p_l »

monocasa wrote: post #49
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hector Martin claims so which (frankly) suggests he has some insiders. However, just because Apple "runs linux" doesn't mean they "run linux" the way you are thinking. It's very easy for corporations to write slapdash, horrific, unmaintainable kernel forks that run on a specific piece of hardware. That's just fine when you are testing hardware before handing it to your OS team, but absolutely unacceptable for upstrea…

> Hector Martin claims so which (frankly) suggests he has some insiders. Eh, I've heard the same thing form people I trust, and I'm not the Apple news version of deep throat or something. It's simply not a very well kept secret. Although part of me wonders if the code will flow the other way. Now that marcan has put in the elbow grease to upstream concepts like 16KB pages, the non standard ordering for regular MMIO a…

16kB pages weren't too hard to get running before, iirc, it's just that most devices people care about went to 64kB.

Generally linux is happy unless you try to make pages smaller than 4kB,then all sorts of hell break lose in VFS

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#238

Post by realjhol »

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.

No post body was provided.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#239

Post by helf »

saltcured wrote: post #185
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…

In the era of CP/M machines, the terminal likely had a similar CPU and RAM to the computer running the OS too. So you had one CPU managing the text framebuffer and CRT driver, connected to one managing another text framebuffer and application, connected to another one managing the floppy disk servos.

I guess I should have clarified more: I dislike everything running entirely separate OSes that you have no control over at all and are complete black boxes.

The fact they are running entire OSes themselves isn’t that big of a deal. I just hate having no control.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#240

Post by GekkePrutser »

gsora wrote: post #212
GekkePrutser wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also they have matte screens and real keyboards. The 2015MBP one was the last one that was passable for me, what came after is horrible. Even the new MBP that has real ports again is still not as good as the 2015 in terms of keyboard.

Thinkpad keyboards are great (I own a couple T400’s and used to daily drive a X61s), but the latest MacBook Pros have real, actually good keyboards afaik too.

I've tried them but they're nowhere near Lenovo quality sadly. Unfortunately Lenovo is on a downward trend with ever less travel with each generation so I guess they'll be on par in a few years :(
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