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Is it time for open processors?

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Re: Is it time for open processors?

#41

Post by beojan »

Lxr wrote: post #39
quantummkv wrote: post #36

Open Processors is a very bad idea. Look at what's happening to Android. The same thing will happen with CPU's. Every OEM will fork the open design and put all of their stupidity inside it in the name of features and security. Bugs like Spectre and Meltdown will become commonplace. The entire time of kernel devs will be spent working around the various 'features' of the OEM designs. Then someone will come up with a J…

Why doesn’t this happen with linux, in your opinion? Is it the license?

It happens with Windows. It has nothing to do with openness, it happens with all OEMs.

Re: Is it time for open processors?

#42

Post by anameaname »

mpweiher wrote: post #22
cm2187 wrote: post #5

If we see further fragmentation of cpu architectures it's not going to be fun for users and developers. Already the fragmentation of OS makes that cross platform is a big challenge. It would make the equivalent of a .net/java/webassembly/posix critical.

> further fragmentation of cpu architectures "Fragmentation"?? We have a huge monoculture of Intel x86/x64 on the desktop, driven by Intel's fab advantage that smothered all alternative (and often superior) architectures. And recently, a second one has sprung up with ARM on mobile. And it hasn't really been good for the industry. Fortunately, the Windows monoculture in OSes has been broken, so much that MS wasn't abl…

> And it hasn't really been good for the industry.

Intel's problems over the past year aside, they have done an amazing job pushing the limits of computation over the past decades.

Re: Is it time for open processors?

#43

Post by beojan »

mpweiher wrote: post #22
cm2187 wrote: post #5

If we see further fragmentation of cpu architectures it's not going to be fun for users and developers. Already the fragmentation of OS makes that cross platform is a big challenge. It would make the equivalent of a .net/java/webassembly/posix critical.

> further fragmentation of cpu architectures "Fragmentation"?? We have a huge monoculture of Intel x86/x64 on the desktop, driven by Intel's fab advantage that smothered all alternative (and often superior) architectures. And recently, a second one has sprung up with ARM on mobile. And it hasn't really been good for the industry. Fortunately, the Windows monoculture in OSes has been broken, so much that MS wasn't abl…

ARM has lots of manufacturers licensing the basic design.

Re: Is it time for open processors?

#44

Post by baddox »

quantummkv wrote: post #36

Open Processors is a very bad idea. Look at what's happening to Android. The same thing will happen with CPU's. Every OEM will fork the open design and put all of their stupidity inside it in the name of features and security. Bugs like Spectre and Meltdown will become commonplace. The entire time of kernel devs will be spent working around the various 'features' of the OEM designs. Then someone will come up with a J…

Do you just mean that a popular open architecture will lead to more competition and variation in implementations, which will require more work by kernel developers versus just having a much smaller number of closed-design CPUs?

Re: Is it time for open processors?

#45

Post by icelancer »

mpweiher wrote: post #22
cm2187 wrote: post #5

If we see further fragmentation of cpu architectures it's not going to be fun for users and developers. Already the fragmentation of OS makes that cross platform is a big challenge. It would make the equivalent of a .net/java/webassembly/posix critical.

> further fragmentation of cpu architectures "Fragmentation"?? We have a huge monoculture of Intel x86/x64 on the desktop, driven by Intel's fab advantage that smothered all alternative (and often superior) architectures. And recently, a second one has sprung up with ARM on mobile. And it hasn't really been good for the industry. Fortunately, the Windows monoculture in OSes has been broken, so much that MS wasn't abl…

>often superior

This is a little hyperbolic. There have been occasional superior alternatives but "often" is kinda silly. By and large, the best products won - and that is despite accepting that Intel acted in anti-competitive ways in the past (Cyrix et al).

Re: Is it time for open processors?

#46

Post by B-Con »

Lxr wrote: post #39
quantummkv wrote: post #36

Open Processors is a very bad idea. Look at what's happening to Android. The same thing will happen with CPU's. Every OEM will fork the open design and put all of their stupidity inside it in the name of features and security. Bugs like Spectre and Meltdown will become commonplace. The entire time of kernel devs will be spent working around the various 'features' of the OEM designs. Then someone will come up with a J…

Why doesn’t this happen with linux, in your opinion? Is it the license?

Linux proper, ie the kernel, allows things like modules and has a powerful userspace. Most purposes are met by taking vanilla Linux and dropping some modules and userspace applications on it. You don't have to do a hard fork of the code.

But if you're talking about distros (or some vauge distro-like prepackaged blob of Linux + userspace), it does happen. There are a lot of specialized Linux distros out there, and they aren't all on long-term support with security backporting.

Re: Is it time for open processors?

#47

Post by therealmarv »

quantummkv wrote: post #36

Open Processors is a very bad idea. Look at what's happening to Android. The same thing will happen with CPU's. Every OEM will fork the open design and put all of their stupidity inside it in the name of features and security. Bugs like Spectre and Meltdown will become commonplace. The entire time of kernel devs will be spent working around the various 'features' of the OEM designs. Then someone will come up with a J…

Is not ARM open (but you need a license to build it) ? There are several ARM variants (Qualcomm, Samsung, even Apple) even today.

Re: Is it time for open processors?

#48

Post by quantummkv »

Lxr wrote: post #39
quantummkv wrote: post #36

Open Processors is a very bad idea. Look at what's happening to Android. The same thing will happen with CPU's. Every OEM will fork the open design and put all of their stupidity inside it in the name of features and security. Bugs like Spectre and Meltdown will become commonplace. The entire time of kernel devs will be spent working around the various 'features' of the OEM designs. Then someone will come up with a J…

Why doesn’t this happen with linux, in your opinion? Is it the license?

This does happen in Linux till some extent. Look at wayland for example. Broken on nvidia hardware because nvidia favors its own implementation.

The reason why this does not happen with Linux kernel is because Redhat and Canonical go to great lengths to backport kernel patches, which by proxy affect all the distos based on them. Also because Linux desktop is not big enough for OEM's of the majority of PC users to care about.

Android is a flavour of linux that went big. The fact that OEM's can clone the kernel and put their own drivers into it without being forced to update is what causes the most grief in Android world.

Re: Is it time for open processors?

#49

Post by tjoff »

anameaname wrote: post #42
mpweiher wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> further fragmentation of cpu architectures "Fragmentation"?? We have a huge monoculture of Intel x86/x64 on the desktop, driven by Intel's fab advantage that smothered all alternative (and often superior) architectures. And recently, a second one has sprung up with ARM on mobile. And it hasn't really been good for the industry. Fortunately, the Windows monoculture in OSes has been broken, so much that MS wasn't abl…

> And it hasn't really been good for the industry. Intel's problems over the past year aside, they have done an amazing job pushing the limits of computation over the past decades.

Last decade I'm not so sure. I bought the very first readily available consumer quad core CPU a decade ago (the Q6600), two years ago I upgraded and I had to pay a huge premium because I wanted more than four (I got six!) cores. And that is just starting to change today.

Not that core count is everything but consumer desktop CPUs have stagnated quite a bit. Here's to hoping AMD stirs it up a bit.

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