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

Intel Problems

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 431 posts

Re: Intel Problems

#321

Post by jlawer »

rapsey wrote: post #220
optimiz3 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory model, execution units, simd instructions...

The vast majority of code running is in python, js, jvm, php, ruby, etc. Far removed these concerns.

Some of those languages (especially python & php) utilise C based modules or packaged external binaries. Both of which have to be available / compatible with ARM.

When you run pip or composer on Amd64 they often pull these down and you don't notice, but if you try on arm you discover quickly that some packages don't support ARM. Sometimes there is a slower fallback option, but often there is none.

Re: Intel Problems

#322

Post by hyper_reality »

yourapostasy wrote: post #83
recursivedoubts wrote: post #2

Perhaps now the "Why do people obsess over manufacturing?" question that many tech workers ask when other US industries were decimated will become a bit less quizzical.

It was more economics and political policy wonks, economists and politicians in general, who didn't just ask that question, but thrust forth the prescriptive rhetoric through a large grid of trade agreements, "Globalism is here to stay! Get over it! Comparative Advantage!" This is only the first in a long, expensive series of lessons these people will be taught by reality in the coming decades. I'm guessing this kind…

This was very nicely expressed, I would read a book in this style!

By the way, I'm not sure the hnchat.com service linked in your profile works any more?

Re: Intel Problems

#323

Post by ogre_codes »

eitland wrote: post #315
ogre_codes wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? I'm not sure why a newer Mac with better CPU options is going to result in increasing Linux share. If anything, it's likely to be neutral or favor the Mac with it's newer/ faster CPU. > But frankly I believe Apple have lost ground UI-wise…

> Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the company I work for but also elsewhere. The speed advantage over Windows is so huge that it is painful to go back once you've seen it. MS Office isn't seen as a requirement anymore, nobody think it is funny if you use GSuite and besides, last time I used an office file for work is months ago: everything exist…

> At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the company I work for but also elsewhere.

I see it far more now than I did ~5-10 years ago when it was my daily driver. I'm just not sure if it's gotten a baseline support and flatlined or if it's growing consistently now.

Fully agree with almost all of your points, and if MacOS did go off the deep end in terms of functionality, I'd be back on Linux. It's why I'm a big fan of what Marcan is doing and follow it closely.

If Linux support was as good now as it was when I switched, I'd likely have never switched to the Mac.

But now I just stick around for the hardware.

Re: Intel Problems

#324

Post by ogre_codes »

rurp wrote: post #318
ogre_codes wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? I'm not sure why a newer Mac with better CPU options is going to result in increasing Linux share. If anything, it's likely to be neutral or favor the Mac with it's newer/ faster CPU. > But frankly I believe Apple have lost ground UI-wise…

As much as I would like it to happen, I think it's unlikely Linux will be taking any market share away from Macs. That said, I could imagine it happening a couple ways. The first being an increasingly iPhonified and restricted Mac OS that some devs get fed up with. The second would be Apple pushing all MacBooks to M1 too soon, breaking certain tools and workflows. While I think both of those scenarios could easily ha…

> The second would be Apple pushing all MacBooks to M1 too soon, breaking certain tools and workflows.

I don't think this is an issue. Apple has been fairly straight about timelines and people who want to stick with Intel have plenty of time and options to get their stuff in a row in advance. More important, Apple fixed most of the major irritations with the MacBook Pro. If they hadn't launched the 16" MBP last year, people would have been stuck with a fairly old/ compromised design.

I suspect Apple is going to maintain MacOS right where it is now. People have been worried about "iOSification" for nearly a decade now and while there have been some elements, the core functionality is fundamentally the same.

Re: Intel Problems

#325

Post by freeone3000 »

Koshkin wrote: post #317
surajrmal wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I develop on GNU/Linux begrudgingly. It has all of my tools, but I have a never-ending stream of issues with WiFi, display, audio, etc. As far as I'm concerned, GNU/Linux is something that's meant to be used headless and ssh'd into.

Try a Raspberry Pi. It just works.

Except for when the wifi fails or your SD card that you boot off of gets corrupted or you try to do something that requires a bit more power than 1.2GHz and 1GB RAM can handle.

Re: Intel Problems

#326

Post by brobinson »

mc10 wrote: post #251
npunt wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ben missed an important part of the geopolitical difference between TSMC and Intel: Taiwan is much more invested in TSMC's success than America is in Intel's. Taiwan's share of the semiconductor industry is 66% and TSMC is the leader of that industry. Semiconductors helps keep Taiwan from China's encroachment because it buys them protection from allies like the US and Europe, whose economies heavily rely on them. To…

> Semiconductors helps keep Taiwan from China's encroachment because it buys them protection from allies like the US and Europe, whose economies heavily rely on them. Are there any signed agreements that would enforce this? If China one day suddenly decides to take Taiwan, would the US or Europe step in with military forces?

Not an agreement, but the US stance towards the defense of Taiwan (ROC) was recently declassified early: https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/01/15/declass...

Re: Intel Problems

#327

Post by LockAndLol »

How does RISC factor into all of this? China is working on its own chips after Trump poked the bear. It wouldn't surprise me if, seemingly out of nowhere, they suddenly started promoting and selling RISC chips and compatible motherboards at competitive prices.

Re: Intel Problems

#328

Post by mceachen »

john_alan wrote: post #272
rauhl wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these machines will age out and be replaced with m1 powered machines. At that point the idea of developing on ARM and deploying on x86 will be unpleasant Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Agreed that developing on ARM and deploying on x86 is unpleasant,…

You can easily bring macOS up to Linux level GNU with brew. I agree generally though. I see macOS as an important Unix OS for the next decade.

> bring macOS up to Linux level GNU with brew.

Ugh, not even.

Simple and straightforward shell scripts that work on decade-old Linux distributions don't work on Big Sur due to ancient macOS bsd tooling.

Just look at stackoverflow or similar sites: every answer has a comment "but this doesn't work on my macOS box."

(I've had to add countless if-posix-but-mac workarounds for PhotoStructure).

Re: Intel Problems

#330

Post by kickopotomus »

ZeroCool2u wrote: post #96
garaetjjte wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only comparable data point says that this is a terrible idea. Huh, I would say completely opposite thing. AMD wouldn't have survived if it kept trying to improve their own process instead of going to TSMC.

The problem here is not the success of AMD after splitting, but the complete retreat of Global Foundries from the SOTA process node. If this happens again with an Intel split then we have only TSMC left, off the coast of mainland China in Taiwan, in the middle of a game of thermonuclear tug of war between the West and China. While Capitalism will likely be part of the solution, through subsidizes for Intel or some ot…

> The geopolitical ramifications of completely centralizing the only leading process node in such a sensitive area between the world's super powers cannot be understated.

This is a fair point but I think it will be less of a concern once TSMC's 5nm fab in Arizona comes online[1]. Samsung is also in the process of building a 5nm fab in Korea[2]. Geopolitically, Korea may still be a minor concern, but much less so than a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

[1]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15803/tsmc-build-5nm-fab-in-a...

[2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-21/samsung-t...

Post reply on HN