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

Illumos to drop SPARC Support

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 184 posts

Re: Illumos to drop SPARC Support

#61

Post by mrweasel »

klelatti wrote: post #36
mavhc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sold their 40% stake in ARM when they were short of cash. Switch from Power PC to Intel, and then from Intel to ARM. I'm using Apple as a tipping point, to when the new architecture was so much better than the old it completely took over. Obviously with 90% of Apple devices being ARM already it was an easier choice for them this time. But as each Architecture gets more power as the market is many times bigger, i…

On the Apple specific case I think any move to RISC V would be because it would want more control than it has with Arm. It could then take the RISC V ISA in the direction it wants. I'm guessing it already has a lot of influence over Arm though and there are other factors that strongly act in favour of staying with Arm. If Nvidia takes over Arm though and starts making life difficult for the ecosystem then that could…

Apple is really interesting, with chip design being moved inhouse and the ease of which they seem to switch architecture they could move away from ARM if the Nvidia purchase happens. I think they’d want to avoid it, at least for the next 10 years.

It would be interesting to know how important the ARM instruction set is to Apple.

Re: Illumos to drop SPARC Support

#62

Post by tyingq »

classichasclass wrote: post #35
tyingq wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mildly interesting to me that there's now really no notable big-endian systems left, yet that's still the network byte order. I wonder what the math is for the amount of global wasted CPU cycles on byte-swapping for things that would do a fair amount of that...DNS for example.

Power ISA systems are still bi-endian and many systems run big. In fact, the low level OPAL interfaces require you to be in big-endian mode, AIX and i are still BE, and both FreeBSD and OpenBSD have BE flavours for current PowerNV systems. Even a few Linux distros run big (Adelie comes to mind). They're definitely a minority but they're still around.

Yes, I wasn't claiming that no big endian systems exist. Just that they are overwhelmingly in the minority now, and so the number of ASM byte swapping ops happening is mildy amusing.

Re: Illumos to drop SPARC Support

#63

Post by tyingq »

rjsw wrote: post #52
tyingq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you can find an ARM big endian distribution of, for example NetBSD. No Linux that I can find. Apparently boot issues are a bit tricky.

I'm fairly sure that NetBSD/arm switches to big endian once the kernel is running, the boot process is unchanged.

The thing holding it back for Rpi4 is UEFI+ACPI, so I assume there's some boot process changes.

Re: Illumos to drop SPARC Support

#64

Post by kube-system »

mrweasel wrote: post #61
klelatti wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the Apple specific case I think any move to RISC V would be because it would want more control than it has with Arm. It could then take the RISC V ISA in the direction it wants. I'm guessing it already has a lot of influence over Arm though and there are other factors that strongly act in favour of staying with Arm. If Nvidia takes over Arm though and starts making life difficult for the ecosystem then that could…

Apple is really interesting, with chip design being moved inhouse and the ease of which they seem to switch architecture they could move away from ARM if the Nvidia purchase happens. I think they’d want to avoid it, at least for the next 10 years. It would be interesting to know how important the ARM instruction set is to Apple.

Given Apple's history, and their business style, I don't think they have loyalty to any architecture or any specific technology in particular. They're care about product first, and choose whatever technology they need to choose to get there. https://youtu.be/oeqPrUmVz-o?t=113

Re: Illumos to drop SPARC Support

#65

Post by rvp-x »

rjsw wrote: post #52
tyingq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you can find an ARM big endian distribution of, for example NetBSD. No Linux that I can find. Apparently boot issues are a bit tricky.

I'm fairly sure that NetBSD/arm switches to big endian once the kernel is running, the boot process is unchanged.

ACPI is problematic in big endian.

Re: Illumos to drop SPARC Support

#66

Post by klelatti »

mrweasel wrote: post #61
klelatti wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the Apple specific case I think any move to RISC V would be because it would want more control than it has with Arm. It could then take the RISC V ISA in the direction it wants. I'm guessing it already has a lot of influence over Arm though and there are other factors that strongly act in favour of staying with Arm. If Nvidia takes over Arm though and starts making life difficult for the ecosystem then that could…

Apple is really interesting, with chip design being moved inhouse and the ease of which they seem to switch architecture they could move away from ARM if the Nvidia purchase happens. I think they’d want to avoid it, at least for the next 10 years. It would be interesting to know how important the ARM instruction set is to Apple.

I wouldn't be completely surprised if there is a box running a build of Mac OS for RISC V somewhere in Cupertino!

Seriously though, I suspect that the ISA isn't that important for Apple but on the other hand I think they're probably quite happy with the direction of the Arm ISA (probably had a big say in parts of it) and it would take quite a lot to push them away.

I think that the odds on the Nvidia takeover are quite small by now so don't think a move likely at all.

Re: Illumos to drop SPARC Support

#67

Post by Nursie »

tyingq wrote: post #23
pabs3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC ARM devices can also be big-endian and GCC can even generate big endian 64-bit ARM code: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/AArch64-Options.html

Yeah, you can find an ARM big endian distribution of, for example NetBSD. No Linux that I can find. Apparently boot issues are a bit tricky.

You used to be able to get debian arm-be, but that was a good 15 years ago.

Re: Illumos to drop SPARC Support

#68

Post by klelatti »

kube-system wrote: post #64
mrweasel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is really interesting, with chip design being moved inhouse and the ease of which they seem to switch architecture they could move away from ARM if the Nvidia purchase happens. I think they’d want to avoid it, at least for the next 10 years. It would be interesting to know how important the ARM instruction set is to Apple.

Given Apple's history, and their business style, I don't think they have loyalty to any architecture or any specific technology in particular. They're care about product first, and choose whatever technology they need to choose to get there. https://youtu.be/oeqPrUmVz-o?t=113

It's a great clip - possibly my favourite Jobs clip.

Agree with the point 100% but Apple also has a history of long and sustained investments in key parts of the stack where it sees long term value - including compilers and silicon - and long relationships with suppliers. I suspect their relationship with Arm is in that category and so in the absence of something that is demonstrably better, then that will continue.

Re: Illumos to drop SPARC Support

#69

Post by classichasclass »

mrweasel wrote: post #61
klelatti wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the Apple specific case I think any move to RISC V would be because it would want more control than it has with Arm. It could then take the RISC V ISA in the direction it wants. I'm guessing it already has a lot of influence over Arm though and there are other factors that strongly act in favour of staying with Arm. If Nvidia takes over Arm though and starts making life difficult for the ecosystem then that could…

Apple is really interesting, with chip design being moved inhouse and the ease of which they seem to switch architecture they could move away from ARM if the Nvidia purchase happens. I think they’d want to avoid it, at least for the next 10 years. It would be interesting to know how important the ARM instruction set is to Apple.

Pretty sure Apple has a permanent ARM license. They'll watch what happens with Nvidia, but it doesn't really affect them because, as you say, all the secret sauce is in-house.

Re: Illumos to drop SPARC Support

#70

Post by klelatti »

classichasclass wrote: post #69
mrweasel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is really interesting, with chip design being moved inhouse and the ease of which they seem to switch architecture they could move away from ARM if the Nvidia purchase happens. I think they’d want to avoid it, at least for the next 10 years. It would be interesting to know how important the ARM instruction set is to Apple.

Pretty sure Apple has a permanent ARM license. They'll watch what happens with Nvidia, but it doesn't really affect them because, as you say, all the secret sauce is in-house.

Does that give them control over the direction of the ISA - suspect not. Don't think it's really the case then that they're unaffected by the Nvidia takeover.
Post reply on HN