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Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

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Re: Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

#71

Post by themaninthedark »

reaperman wrote: post #33
jrockway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on the complexity. Sure, 555 timers and even microcontrollers have datasheets. CPUs that run Linux, Wifi chips supporting recent standards, etc.? Rare. This is why Linux in the 90s was a big pain; you get some random Ethernet chip and there is no documentation on how to talk to it, so you're just dead in the water. (I think Android was the turning point. From then on, stuff had to support Linux, bec…

> But cheaper than testing it yourself. It always felt like, IMO, that we end up testing it ourselves anyways. Obviously we don't go through the whole spec, but like you, we implement what we need and find the relevant bugs/errata ourselves. It's very painful to run across these and I don't recall an MCU that doesn't have at least one that we run into and have to workaround because development is already deep enough…

I think that they were saying it was cheaper for the manufacturer to not test it and use their customers as bug testers and troubleshooters.

Re: Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

#72

Post by rcxdude »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #70
fluoridation wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "little or no change in performance since the 90s"? Computers now are hundreds if not thousands of times faster than in the 90s. Also, if anything, modern desktop hardware is so complex not because of centralization, but because of de centralization. If your computer was made by a single manufacturer, that manufacturer could optimize the final product as much as it wanted, because it'd have control n…

> What do you mean "little or no change in performance since the 90s"? Computers now are hundreds if not thousands of times faster than in the 90s. Do you seriously think the person you’re replying to didn’t know this?

well, it's quite hard to interpret that statement any other way, so I can understand the request for clarification including a direct contradiction of the obvious interpretation.

Re: Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

#73

Post by RecycledEle »

30 years ago, I said "When Moore's law finally stops, we will go back and clean up all the kludges we committed to over the decades." Then I realized that was how we would know that Moore's law was dead - when we started cleaning up our mess.

I'm sorry to say we are there. Just after Mr. Moore himself died, his law died.

Re: Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

#74

Post by rcxdude »

zackmorris wrote: post #22

I've noticed the trend of ever-increasingly complex hardware with little or no change in performance since the 90s, and ranted about it extensively since I joined HN. I think we're past considering the problem from a technical perspective and need to look at the conspiratorial forces involved. To me, the problem is one of monopoly and corporate thinking. When Intel and AMD make most of the chips, we end up with a Cok…

FPGAs will never be mainstream for replacing CPUs or GPUs: the performance overhead of an FPGA compared to dedicated silicon is huge and not going down, regardless of how open or closed they are. FPGAs have their uses in niches, but I don't think they'll ever be something the average user has in their device, and certainly they won't be the only thing in there. Anyone wishing to disrupt the way mainstream compute is done will need to make silicon, and competitive silicon (thankfully, this is more accessable than it ever has been thanks to the fabs no longer being vertically integrated with chip design companies, but it's still a very large barrier to entry). Someone with the resources to do it making a 100,000 core machine would be interesting, but I doubt the results will be very good (see greenarrays).

similarly, genetic algorithms are not actually very good. The only advantage of them is they can kinda work for a wide variety of wonky problems, but there's almost always a better option, usually one which is way better than a GA.

Re: Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

#75

Post by rcxdude »

topspin wrote: post #26
derefr wrote: post #16

Are vertically-integrated SoCs (Apple Silicon, NVIDIA Tegra, etc.) subject to the “OS only controls part of the hardware” problem? I always figured that in these systems, there would be power-efficiency and BOM-cost pressure to “de-vendor” the SoC by replicating IP-core functionality with logic merged into firmware or a few larger service cores — or even kernel daemons run on the efficiency cores of the application p…

> or even kernel daemons run on the efficiency cores When (not if) the kernel scheduler locks up while the fans are slow/stopped at the same moment some scheduled user process begins driving 250W+ through a CPU the isolated fan controller (not to mention isolated thermal throttling logic, also independent of the OS) has great value. > If this doesn’t happen—why doesn’t it? Hardware evolves faster than operating syste…

The M1 mac laptops have gone partway in this direction, though they still have a great deal running as firmware: the speaker drivers can drive a lot of power into the speakers in order to get better and louder sound, but this opens up the possibility of a particularly aggressive waveform damaging the speakers from overheating. The OS is responsible for ensuring that this doesn't happen by modelling the power dissipated in the speakers and limiting the power when they are likely to be getting too hot.

Re: Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

#76

Post by rcxdude »

derefr wrote: post #45
topspin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or even kernel daemons run on the efficiency cores When (not if) the kernel scheduler locks up while the fans are slow/stopped at the same moment some scheduled user process begins driving 250W+ through a CPU the isolated fan controller (not to mention isolated thermal throttling logic, also independent of the OS) has great value. > If this doesn’t happen—why doesn’t it? Hardware evolves faster than operating syste…

You don’t seem to be paying attention to the words “vertically integrated” in my question — which were the whole point of my question. Apple creates both the OS and the hardware for their phones. So why shouldn’t the hardware microcontroller firmware for the hardware they create (or commission and constrain the design of), run as one or several RTOS blobs that ship as part of the OS on one or several shared MCUs? Let…

One thing is that even in a vertically integrated company you don't necessarily have great communication between the teams responsible for one part or another. And so if there's not a great technical push for it, it can still make sense to have a bunch of silos to simplify the interfaces between different parts of the system.

Re: Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

#77

Post by throwaway32908 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #64

> The immense hardware complexity of modern computers, both mobile phones and datacenter servers, is a seemingly endless source of bugs and vulnerabilities in system software. I'm a bit torn here. On one side, I'd really love to have equipment that can be proven to be bug free in theory or in practice. On the other side, often enough the only thing allowing me as an user to actually use a computing device for things…

I'm basically on the "other side", I know some people have genuine security concerns but still find it amusing when people complain about devices being "obsolete" once they no longer receive updates, when I avoid them like the plague because all they ever do is remove intended and unintended freedoms.

But maybe we're in a trap, because we can use hacks to do what we need, it's not worth the effort of switching from Android etc. But if these hacks were fully gone, alternatives would find it easier get off the ground.

Have to hope so because we're going to find out, these systems are only getting more secure and locked-down with time.

Re: Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

#78

Post by LoganDark »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #62
samtho wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I’m not quite sure where it fits within the market. It’s quite pricey for pro-sumer and not enterprise-y enough for larger companies to buy into it.

It's about the fastest system you can get if you want open hardware. There are people willing to pay a premium for that. It's obviously not going to find a mass market at that price. But maybe they'll make enough money to develop a lower-priced one that can reach more customers.

> There are people willing to pay a premium for that.

I wish this existed in the laptop space, where I can't even buy what I want.

But the Talos II exists, where you can get 4 threads per core for the low price of... oh, just $8,000.

That's almost one and a half MacBooks!

Re: Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

#79

Post by loup-vaillant »

StillBored wrote: post #25
acuozzo wrote: post #7

I thought that when the Intel Management Engine implementation details (hidden Minix!) were released that it would only be a matter of time for a "Full FOSS" movement within enthusiast communities. I was wrong, it seems. There hasn't even been a push for an affordable 802.3ab gigabit ethernet card with an FPGA.

Ethernet card built from a FPGA or one with an FPGA on the side? Because in both questions your talking about the fact that there are basically three companies providing FPGAs and none of them seem particularly interested in killing their high margin markets. Worse the "DPU" crowd are largely selling about $100 worth of compute for $3k+ because it has an attached 100G port. OTOH I assume the next step for the icestor…

> I assume the next step for the icestorm/etc folks once they actually have a reasonable toolchain working on the lattice parts

Wait, they don’t? What’s missing?

Re: Putting out the hardware dumpster fire

#80

Post by charcircuit »

jrockway wrote: post #27
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most electrical components have traditionally had open datasheets. It is only a relatively recent phenomenon that mass market ICs are locked behind NDAs.

It really depends on the complexity. Sure, 555 timers and even microcontrollers have datasheets. CPUs that run Linux, Wifi chips supporting recent standards, etc.? Rare. This is why Linux in the 90s was a big pain; you get some random Ethernet chip and there is no documentation on how to talk to it, so you're just dead in the water. (I think Android was the turning point. From then on, stuff had to support Linux, bec…

>Android was the turning point

>vendor's 3-year-old version of Linux

Android uses the latest LTS Linux kernel.

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