Early Work Is Underway On Reverse-Engineering The Apple M1 GPU

[jaxa]

Hopefully the M1 and rumored 12, 16, 32, and 64-core variants will convince other ARM manufacturers to make a few chips with increased core counts, even if the resulting chips aren't capable of getting anywhere near the single-thread performance (even the Cortex-X1 isn't enough). It would be nice to see some 16-core ARM SBCs.

[CommunityMember]

Hopefully the M1 and rumored 12, 16, 32, and 64-core variants will convince other ARM manufacturers to make a few chips with increased core counts

There are, of course. many ARM designs with a large number of cores. However, they have not been targeted towards the desktop/laptop market, and that is mostly going to be that there is a perception that the numbers of sales would be too small to justify the investment except for really boutique designs (with an appropriate boutique price). If you want more options on the desktop and laptop have your few hundred thousand employee company commit to replacing all their desktops and laptops with ARM based units over the next few years.

[Mez']

Precisely. Doing this difficult work sends the message to these companies that they don't have to bother with those FOSS people. "The FOSS people will figure it out on their own, they'll do it for free, and we don't have to waste any resources helping them". If instead, we focus on rewarding the FOSS-friendly companies with our dollars, that sends a clear message to the rest, that "FOSS Unfriendly" = "no sale".

Personally I just dropped $1600 on a loaded Galago Pro laptop from System76. It's a really nice machine! Are there possibly slightly cheaper options out there? Sure. Are there options that have more features? Sure. But System76 support is amazing. They are first and foremost a Linux hardware vendor, so I can be certain that *all* the features and options on this machine are 100% Linux compatible, and will work out of the box. Vote with your dollars.

Agreed.
Which is why I also just bought the Aura 15 laptop from Tuxedo Computers (my 9 yo Asus laptop will finally retire). Their Linux support is first hand.

This works as well for Steam and games. Don't buy games expecting them to work with Proton. Buy games that have a native version or a port. Reward the effort and the consideration for Linux. Don't expect disdaining companies to care about it if Proton does the work for them.

Don't support Apple.

[jo-erlend]

to get a useful mesa driver bevore apple has released so much hw updates that it is outdated

That way of thinking annoys me really bad. Just because a new computer is made, doesn't make the current one worthless. We need to expand things lifespan and reduce the garbageification of things.

[Viki Ai]

That way of thinking annoys me really bad. Just because a new computer is made, doesn't make the current one worthless. We need to expand things lifespan and reduce the garbageification of things.

Very much! (Posted from a Dell machine work eWasted a bunch of because they lack a Win10 driver for some important bit of them - runs Desktop Linux beautifully!).

[Alexmitter]

That way of thinking annoys me really bad. Just because a new computer is made, doesn't make the current one worthless. We need to expand things lifespan and reduce the garbageification of things.

There is an issue with that. Lets say I have an old proper Operon server and a low end embedded xeon server board, both 16 cores. The operon takes serious power while the Xeon is a 45W SoC. The Xeon is also a lot faster too.
In fact I have that issue with many old systems I keep, they are just too slow and too expensive to run and maintain, even for a private person like me.

[WolfpackN64]

I can never understand why people waste their time on trying support something that was designed to not be supported like stuff from Apple and Nvidia.
If users want to use hardware with Linux, they should just buy Linux and open source friendly hardware.

Many people, like me discover Linux while not using hardware that had Linux pre-installed. I'm an ex mac user myself. If it wasn't for the fact I could easily install quite a lot of distros on my mac, I might not have switched.
Apple's proprietary nature is not ideal, but a lot of people use macs, so trying to support them is important.

[Slartifartblast]

I wouldn't break wind to help the most consumer unfriendly company in history.

[Michael_S]

I can never understand why people waste their time on trying support something that was designed to not be supported like stuff from Apple and Nvidia.
If users want to use hardware with Linux, they should just buy Linux and open source friendly hardware.

I say, if Linux enthusiasts want to use hardware with Linux, they should just buy Linux and open source friendly hardware.

But to attract more of the general public, we have to keep increasing the amount of supported hardware. Our goal as a community should be that when any person says, "I'd like to try Linux, will it work on my device?" we can always answer, "Yes."

So don't think of this project as spending money and resources for Apple's benefit. Think of it as increasing the number of devices on the market where installing Linux is low effort, even for novices, by many millions.

[discordian]

I wouldn't break wind to help the most consumer unfriendly company in history.

Well, getting the most consumer unfriendly desktop to run on it would be a perfect match.