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submitted 2 weeks ago by sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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[-] deathmetal27@lemmy.world 62 points 2 weeks ago

I'd rather see what RISC-V has to offer.

[-] bamboo@lemm.ee 25 points 2 weeks ago

As a fellow risc-v supporter, I think the rise of arm is going to help risc-v software support and eventually adoption. They’re not compatible, but right now developers everywhere are working to ensure their applications are portable and not tied to x86. I imagine too that when it comes to emulation, emulating arm is going to be a lot easier than x86, possibly even statically recompilable.

[-] deathmetal27@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

They’re not compatible

This is what concerns me. ARM could dominate the market because almost everyone would develop apps supporting it and leave RISC-V behind. It could become like Itanium vs AMD64 all over again.

[-] zygo_histo_morpheus@programming.dev 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Well right now most people develop apps supporting x86 and leaves everything else behind. If they're supporting x86 + arm, maybe adding riscv as a third option would be a smaller step than adding a second architecture

[-] bamboo@lemm.ee 6 points 2 weeks ago

Exactly. Adding a third should be much simpler than a second.

[-] deathmetal27@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

It greatly depends on the applications.

Porting Windows exclusive games to Linux is a small step as well, but most developers don't do it because they cannot justify the additional QA and debugging time required to port them over. Especially since Linux's market share is small.

The reason Itanium failed was because the architecture was too different from x86 and porting x86 applications over required significant effort and was error prone.

For RISC-V to even get any serious attention from developers, I think they need to have appx 40-50% market share with OEMs alongside ARM. Otherwise, RISC-V will be seen as a niche architecture and developers would avoid porting their applications to it.

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[-] LeFantome@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago

That is a risk on the Windows side for sure. Also, once an ISA becomes popular ( like Apple Silicon ) it will be hard to displace.

Repurposing Linux software for RISC-V should be easy though and I would expect even proprietary software that targets Linux to support it ( if the support anything beyond x86-64 ).

Itanium was a weird architecture and you either bet on it or you did not. RISC and ARM are not so different.

The other factor is that there is a lot less assembly language being used and, if you port away from x64, you are probably going to get rid of any that remains as part of that ( making the app more portable ).

[-] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago

Apple Silicon isn't an ISA, it's just ARM, what are you saying?

[-] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago

Once a chip architecture gets popular on Windows, it will be hard to displace. ARM has already become popular on macOS ( via Apple Silicon ) so we know that is not going anywhere. If ARM becomes popular on Windows ( perhaps via X Elite ), it will be hard to displace as the more popular option. That makes RISC-V on Windows a more difficult proposition.

I do not think that RISC-V on Linux has the same obstacles other than that most hardware will be manufactured for Windows or Mac and will use the chips popular with those operating systems.

[-] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago

I think you missed the forest for the trees my friend. I was simply commenting on the fact you made it sound like Apple Silicon is it's own ISA.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

Or what FPGAs have to offer.

[-] bitfucker@programming.dev 10 points 2 weeks ago

Punch cards are gonna be back baby

[-] colourlesspony@pawb.social 54 points 2 weeks ago

I feel like linux users benefit the most from arm since we can build our software natively for arm with access to the source code.

[-] cerement@slrpnk.net 38 points 2 weeks ago
[-] RedWeasel@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago

Until risc-v is at least as performant as top of the line 2 year old hardware it isn’t going to be of interest to most end users. Right now it is mostly hobbyist hardware.

I also think a lot of trust if being put into it that is going to be misplaced. Just because the ISA is open doesn’t mean anything about the developed hardware.

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[-] 737@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 2 weeks ago

RISC-V is currently already being used in MCUs such as the popular ESP32 line. So I'd say it's looking pretty good for RISC-V. Instruction sets don't really matter in the end though, it's just licensing for the producer to deal with. It's not like you'll be able to make a CPU or even something on the level of old 8-bit MCUs at home any time soon and RISC-V IC designs are typically proprietary too.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago

Same goes for RV, OpenRISC, MIPS and other architectures.

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[-] benzmacx16v@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 2 weeks ago

It doesn’t usually work that well in practice. I have been running an M1 MBA for the last couple years (asahi Arch and now Asahi Fedora spin). More complex pieces of software typically have build system and dependencies that are not compatible or just make hunting everything down a hassle.

That said there is a ton of software that is available for arm64 on Linux so it’s really not that bad of an experience. And there are usually alternatives available for software that cannot be found.

[-] art@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago

Long time Raspberry Pi user here, the only software I can't load natively is Steam. What software are you having problem with on the M1?

[-] Daeraxa@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 weeks ago

Electron apps using older versions that don't support the 16k page size are probably the biggest offenders

[-] uis@lemm.ee 11 points 2 weeks ago
[-] Daeraxa@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

I can't say I'm one who shares that sentiment seeing as the only two projects I'm involved with happen to be Electron based (by chance rather than intention). Hell, one of them is Pulsar which is a continuation of Atom which literally invented Electron.

[-] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 6 points 2 weeks ago

Couldn't we do that with x86?

[-] wasabi@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

We can. The point is that Windows users can't compile for arm. They depend on the Dev to to it. That will take some time and some won't do it at all.

[-] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 2 points 2 weeks ago

Aha. I see so many Docker projects with examples of how to build for ARM, I just assumed it was always that easy.

[-] qaz@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

It's easy to compile something for a certain infrastructure if you can compile it yourself and won't have to beg another party to do so.

[-] Daeraxa@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

Is that a developer licence thing? I know GitHub recently announced Windows Arm runners that would be available to non-teams/enterprise tiers later this year.

[-] RedWeasel@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

It isn’t as simple as just compiling. Large programs like games then need to be tested to make sure the code doesn’t have bugs on ARM. Developers often use assembly to optimize performance, so those portions would need to be rewritten as well. And Apple has been the only large install of performant ARM consumer hardware on anything laptop or desktop windows. So, there hasn’t been a strong install base to even encourage many developers to port their stuff to windows on ARM.

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[-] GustavoM@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago

For me, arm has already "won" this debacle -- convenience > performance all day errday.

[-] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 30 points 2 weeks ago

ARM won the mobile/tablet form factor right from the start. Apple popularised ARM on the desktop. Amazon popularised ARM in the cloud.

Intel's been busy shitting out crap like the 13900K/14900K and pretending that ARM and RISC-V aren't going to eat their lunch.

The only beef I have with ARM systems is the typical SoC formula, I still want to build systems from off the shelf components.

I can't wait.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 6 points 2 weeks ago

The only beef I have with ARM systems is the typical SoC formula, I still want to build systems from off the shelf components.

I'm here with you. ARM and RV could really go into standardization.

[-] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 3 points 2 weeks ago

Thinking about it, the SoC idea could stop at the southern boundary of the chipset in x86 systems.

Include DDR memory controller, PCI controller, USB controllers, iGPU's etc. most of those have migrated into x86 CPU's now anyway (I remember having north and south bridge chipsets!)

Leave the rest of the system: NIC's, dGPU's, etc on the relevant busses.

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[-] FreshLight@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 weeks ago

Ok, no shot the title doesn't contain "arm wrestle" on purpose..

[-] vaionko@sopuli.xyz 9 points 2 weeks ago

It literally has a picture of arm wrestling on there. I think it's on purpose.

[-] FreshLight@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago
[-] librejoe@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Arm is not any better than x86 when it comes to instructions. There's a reason we stuck to x86 for a very long time. Arm is great because of its power efficiency.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Arm is better because there are more than three companies who can design and manufacture one.

Edit: And only one of the three x86 manufacturers are worth a damn, and it ain't Intel.

Edit2: On further checking, VIA sold its CPU design division (Centaur) to Intel in 2021. VIA now makes things like SBCs, some with Intel, some ARM. So there's only two x86 manufacturers around anymore.

[-] uis@lemm.ee 5 points 2 weeks ago
[-] frezik@midwest.social 10 points 2 weeks ago

Yes, everyone forgets them. Mostly for good reasons.

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[-] skilltheamps@feddit.de 9 points 2 weeks ago

That power efficiency is a direct result of the instructions. Namely smaller chips due to the reduced instructions set, in contrast to x86's (legacy bearing) complex instruction set.

[-] 737@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 weeks ago

It's really not, x86 (CISC) CPUs could be just as efficient as arm (RISC) CPUs since instruction sets (despite popular consensus) don't really influence performance or efficiency. It's just that the x86 CPU oligopoly had little interest in producing power efficient CPUs while arm chip manufacturers were mostly making chips for phones and embedded devices making them focus on power efficiency instead of relentlessly maximizing performance. I expect the next few generations of intel and AMD x86 based laptop CPUs to approach the power efficiency Apple and Qualcomm have to offer.

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[-] bamboo@lemm.ee 3 points 2 weeks ago

We stuck to x86 forever because backwards compatibility and because nobody had anything better. Now manufacturers do have something better, and it’s fast enough that emulation is good enough for backwards compatibility.

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[-] Sinfaen@beehaw.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

recently got asahi running on an m1 macbook pro. loving the battery life that I get out of it

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this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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