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

Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

osnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 50 posts

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#41

Post by snvzz »

lproven wrote: post #39
PaulHoule wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get ARM-based PCs and laptops. Thing is so far they all suck except for Apple right now. I sure as hell hope that if Qualcomm even comes close to parity with other platforms they change their name because I'm going to have a hard time associated Snapdragon and their other products with anything that is quality. So far these are for desktop CPUs what https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant is for cars. On the ot…

> You can get ARM-based PCs and laptops. Thing is so far they all suck except for Apple right now. This is true, but there's a consolation -- they suck much much less than RISC-V kit. I run a bunch of nearly 15 year old laptops. I am not a performance addict. But I have not laid fingers on a RISC-V box I'd be willing to spend a morning on.

That'll be true for a few months at best.

The first RVA23 and development boards are coming.

Tenstorrent announced Atlantis in the RISC-V Summit, based on Ascalon microarchitecture and due 2026H1.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#42

Post by laxd »

lproven wrote: post #40
laxd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If 386BSD had been available before I created Linux, then Linux might not have been born" - Linus My impression is that there was also a bit of a culture clash. BSD was the white coat academic world and not very welcoming to outsiders. Linux was the dirty hacker style at a time where online collab became a thing. And then there was the lawsuit that held back BSD at a crucial time in history.

> My impression is that there was also a bit of a culture clash. Agreed, but my impression was of a more complex one than you imply. There were a whole bunch of competing commercial Unix-like OSes in the 1980s. But there were other prejudices as well. In Proper Grown-Up Unix terms, PCs were toys, poorly-made weird little things that were no more than office equipment. So nothing worth using ran on the 386. There was…

Thanks for the effort, that was an interesting read.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#43

Post by rasz »

cjsplat wrote: post #37
titzer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used a Sun Ray for two summers when interning at Sun Labs in 2002 and 2003. They were kind of awesome and kind of sucked at the same time. First, the display wasn't that great for the time, and they were expensive for what you got. Second, we had ours hooked up to (one of) the labs' E10ks. Because it was shared amongst many users, some things could get janky under load. One thing in particular is that certain image…

Umm - there was a network capable computer and a display. There was no way to build that for $100 to $200 at that time. Our Cobalt Networks boxes were about $1k. Take out the disk, add the display. Just because the software makes it a thin client doesn't make the hardware cheaper.

Low end 2000 Celeron, 32MB ram, 6GB, 15 CRT systems were selling for $500 at a profit. Could probably hit $400 by cutting hdd.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#44

Post by lproven »

snvzz wrote: post #41
lproven wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can get ARM-based PCs and laptops. Thing is so far they all suck except for Apple right now. This is true, but there's a consolation -- they suck much much less than RISC-V kit. I run a bunch of nearly 15 year old laptops. I am not a performance addict. But I have not laid fingers on a RISC-V box I'd be willing to spend a morning on.

That'll be true for a few months at best. The first RVA23 and development boards are coming. Tenstorrent announced Atlantis in the RISC-V Summit, based on Ascalon microarchitecture and due 2026H1.

> That'll be true for a few months at best.

The thing is, I have been in this business for 38 years now, and people have been telling me this for at least 3 or 4 years now. Including face-to-face from industry chip makers.

Really, honestly, right now, next month, OK, next quarter, but definitely by next year, really, the next generation is coming and it will bring the speed. The performance is coming, really soon.

And in fact, it's dire. It's crap.

Apple has a huge lead with its Arm chips and although most of the team that made that happen went off to other companies years ago now, nobody else has caught up. Qualcomm isn't there, but it's closer than anyone else. Amazon's server chips look promising but they're huge multicore things, not desktop/single-user devices at all, and they're very expensive in standalone desktops like from System 76.

Nobody so far can equal what Arm can do in skilled hands, and I bought my first desktop Arm computer in 1989. I've known that the potential was there for over a third of a century because I was there at the start.

I have Raspberry Pi 3, 4 and 5 devices here.

Look at this thing: https://system76.com/desktops/thelio-astra-a1.1-n1/configure

It is one hundred times the price of a Pi and can it deliver 100x the single thread performance? No, it cannot.

Can any money buy a RISC-V that can compare to the performance of a $60 Pi 5?

I don't think it can, and promises of "jam tomorrow" don't cut it.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#45

Post by snvzz »

lproven wrote: post #44
snvzz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That'll be true for a few months at best. The first RVA23 and development boards are coming. Tenstorrent announced Atlantis in the RISC-V Summit, based on Ascalon microarchitecture and due 2026H1.

> That'll be true for a few months at best. The thing is, I have been in this business for 38 years now, and people have been telling me this for at least 3 or 4 years now. Including face-to-face from industry chip makers. Really, honestly, right now, next month, OK, next quarter, but definitely by next year, really, the next generation is coming and it will bring the speed. The performance is coming, really soon. An…

I get your pessimism, but I prefer to look at the past for guiding posts.

From ratified spec to hardware on shelves, a 3 year delay has been consistent. This time, it should be no different.

I see no reason for RVA23 chips not to show up as promised next year, particularly with concrete announcements such as the one from Tenstorrent.

RVA23 is densely packed with everything that high performance micro-architectures need.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#46

Post by lproven »

snvzz wrote: post #45
lproven wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That'll be true for a few months at best. The thing is, I have been in this business for 38 years now, and people have been telling me this for at least 3 or 4 years now. Including face-to-face from industry chip makers. Really, honestly, right now, next month, OK, next quarter, but definitely by next year, really, the next generation is coming and it will bring the speed. The performance is coming, really soon. An…

I get your pessimism, but I prefer to look at the past for guiding posts. From ratified spec to hardware on shelves, a 3 year delay has been consistent. This time, it should be no different. I see no reason for RVA23 chips not to show up as promised next year, particularly with concrete announcements such as the one from Tenstorrent. RVA23 is densely packed with everything that high performance micro-architectures ne…

We'll see.

I approached John Ronco from SiFive who had just come off stage after a talk at the Ubuntu Summit in Rīga:

https://events.canonical.com/event/31/contributions/199/

... and asked him, telling him that I was the Linux reporter from The Register. He swore blind that I'd be blown away by the kit that SiFive would release the next year.

That was November 2023.

It didn't happen.

At the following Ubuntu Summit, I spoke to Nirav Patel right after he did this demo:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/18/riscv_framework_main_...

I tried that machine.

I tried to be charitable:

« It runs, it works, and even high-definition video playback is smooth, but this is not a powerhouse CPU. The machine we tried was sluggish and not very responsive. Even playing a single YouTube video, CPU utilization in the System Monitor was pretty high, and it was working hard when we tried moving the video window around. Minimizing it did reduce the CPU burden, though. Aside from video decoding, the machine felt less responsive than our old Raspberry Pi 3, to pick a more familiar example. In our opinion, RISC-V is not yet competitive with Arm in performance. »

We are another year on, and I just recently returned from the following Ubuntu Summit. I am still waiting.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#47

Post by snvzz »

lproven wrote: post #46
snvzz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your pessimism, but I prefer to look at the past for guiding posts. From ratified spec to hardware on shelves, a 3 year delay has been consistent. This time, it should be no different. I see no reason for RVA23 chips not to show up as promised next year, particularly with concrete announcements such as the one from Tenstorrent. RVA23 is densely packed with everything that high performance micro-architectures ne…

We'll see. I approached John Ronco from SiFive who had just come off stage after a talk at the Ubuntu Summit in Rīga: https://events.canonical.com/event/31/contributions/199/ ... and asked him, telling him that I was the Linux reporter from The Register . He swore blind that I'd be blown away by the kit that SiFive would release the next year. That was November 2023. It didn't happen. At the following Ubuntu Summit,…

>(JH7110) I tried...

A RVA20 compliant chip, released in 2023. I have one of these (VisionFive 2, received February 2023) with a couple hard disks and ZFS, serving as home NAS. Between RPi 3 and RPi 4 in CPU speed, similar I/O as RPi 4.

Obviously not a speed demon, but it was the very first mass-produced RISC-V SoC.

>He swore blind that I'd be blown away by the kit that SiFive would release the next year.

Probably the Intel thing that never actually happened, despite there been test chips which is what your acquaintance likely was able to play with.

SiFive released something else instead, earlier this year, as stopgap. Based on their P550 microarchitecture, it is dramatically faster than JH7110, but of no particular interest to anybody not directly involved in RISC-V, as it lacks vector and thus isn't RVA23 compliant.

In 2026, it'll be 2023+3, and many usefully fast RVA23 core IPs (Above Zen1 performance) are expected to finally show up in development boards, although only the one from Tenstorrent has had a concrete announcement so far.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#48

Post by lproven »

snvzz wrote: post #47
lproven wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll see. I approached John Ronco from SiFive who had just come off stage after a talk at the Ubuntu Summit in Rīga: https://events.canonical.com/event/31/contributions/199/ ... and asked him, telling him that I was the Linux reporter from The Register . He swore blind that I'd be blown away by the kit that SiFive would release the next year. That was November 2023. It didn't happen. At the following Ubuntu Summit,…

>(JH7110) I tried... A RVA20 compliant chip, released in 2023. I have one of these (VisionFive 2, received February 2023) with a couple hard disks and ZFS, serving as home NAS. Between RPi 3 and RPi 4 in CPU speed, similar I/O as RPi 4. Obviously not a speed demon, but it was the very first mass-produced RISC-V SoC. >He swore blind that I'd be blown away by the kit that SiFive would release the next year. Probably th…

I hope you are right. I like the idea of free and open source CPUs. I think the industry needs this.

But so far, the promises have not come true, and I am a skeptic at heart.

P.S. what "Intel thing"?

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#49

Post by snvzz »

lproven wrote: post #48
snvzz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(JH7110) I tried... A RVA20 compliant chip, released in 2023. I have one of these (VisionFive 2, received February 2023) with a couple hard disks and ZFS, serving as home NAS. Between RPi 3 and RPi 4 in CPU speed, similar I/O as RPi 4. Obviously not a speed demon, but it was the very first mass-produced RISC-V SoC. >He swore blind that I'd be blown away by the kit that SiFive would release the next year. Probably th…

I hope you are right. I like the idea of free and open source CPUs. I think the industry needs this. But so far, the promises have not come true, and I am a skeptic at heart. P.S. what "Intel thing"?

>P.S. what "Intel thing"?

Horse Creek, a platform developed by a collaboration between Intel and SiFive.

Something happened behind the scenes, and it got cancelled.

Instead, SiFive released some development board with Eswin EIC7700 recently, to fill the gap.

Re: Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025

#50

Post by lproven »

snvzz wrote: post #49
lproven wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you are right. I like the idea of free and open source CPUs. I think the industry needs this. But so far, the promises have not come true, and I am a skeptic at heart. P.S. what "Intel thing"?

>P.S. what "Intel thing"? Horse Creek, a platform developed by a collaboration between Intel and SiFive. Something happened behind the scenes, and it got cancelled. Instead, SiFive released some development board with Eswin EIC7700 recently, to fill the gap.

Huh. I missed the Intel thing, but then, I've been so underwhelmed by RISC-V that I don't track the sector. Thanks for the info!
Post reply on HN