Linux 5.19 Released - Linus Torvalds Released It From An Apple Silicon MacBook

[mdedetrich]

Yeah exactly what you can't do with current apples and if you say the CPU is super powerful it would make more sense to be upgradeable since the cpu should last a real long time, when 16 GB RAM might be to few for certain workloads. And SSDs and RAM do break occasionally ...

I have 64 gigs which should be fine for at least half a decade

Nah, the RAM is an extra die soldered beneath the CPU chip. Just like LP-DDR but with more channels.

It does make a difference https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252...pple-m1-tested

Are you talking about M1 max? But even that would be a far stretch. I mean do you work with geekbench or with real applications? If you look at blender or something else optimized for multi core there is a huge difference. For lightly threaded programms that might be true.

I have a 14" M1 pro and I do work with real applications. I compile non trivial apps ehich is CPU/cache bound.

No way those M1 max are cheaper than a Ryzen or Core i. M1 is produced on 5 nm euv maybe the smallest 120 mm² chip would be a little cheaper compared to 7 nm 200 mm². The M1 MAC Air was actually pretty reasonable priced in its lowest configuration but its useless for anything but office and websurfing. I think they sold it extra cheap to penetrate the user base. The money they lost with those low configs was then gathered back by any better configuration. Looking at the M2 they seem to be back to old pricing habbits.

My point isn't about cost, it's the fact one js a portable laptop with lower TDP to match and the other is a desktop box.

Also it's normal for laptops to be more expensive than desktop equivalents, what's not normal is for laptops to almost match high end desktop SKUs in a 14" chassis

[Quackdoc]

not that Im going to get an arm laptop this high end any time soon, im looking at the new snapdragons and mediateks with the powervr gpus

[Anux]

I have 64 gigs which should be fine for at least half a decade

Holy shit, you really have money to spare.

It does make a difference https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252...pple-m1-tested

Not sure what you want me to see there? The latencys are typical for DDR4 between 80 and 100 ns, high end desktops with RAM OC are allready at 40 - 60 ns, the bandwith is roughly the same as other current dual channel plattforms around 60 GB/s.

My point isn't about cost, it's the fact one js a portable laptop with lower TDP to match and the other is a desktop box.

*scratches head* you said "... Apple ARM chips are the cheapest ..."? At least that was to what I replied.

[mdedetrich]

Holy shit, you really have money to spare.

Company laptop

*scratches head* you said "... Apple ARM chips are the cheapest ..."? At least that was to what I replied.

I said the cost for apple to manufacture the chip, not what Apple sells the chip for.

[coder]

I've heard that nvidia might be working on an ARM chip with an integrated nvidia GPU (albeit i think that news was from 2019 or something);

They have a line of SoCs for like 15 years now that are ARM-based. Google used one in their first "Pixel" chromebook and a couple tablets. Nintendo Switch is another high-profile Tegra user. Lately, their focus seems to have turned towards robotics and self-driving, with newer SoCs adding much more AI horsepower than GPU cores.

What's more relevant to consumers is the licensing deal MediaTek announced about a year ago, in which they'll be shipping their own ARM-based SoCs with integrated Nvidia GPU IP.

[coder]

Linus is wrong about one thing, though:

We've had arm64 hardware around running Linux for a long time, but none of it has really been usable as a development platform until now.

There have been Ampere-based workstations on the market for a few years, already. Even going back to their eMAG processors, which admittedly weren't very interesting.

[mdedetrich]

Linus is wrong about one thing, though:


There have been Ampere-based workstations on the market for a few years, already. Even going back to their eMAG processors, which admittedly weren't very interesting.

The latest ARM Ampere CPU's are ridiculous if you take into account how cheap they are and they are extremely competitive against EPYC/XEON, see https://www.tomshardware.com/news/am...28-core-priced

[Developer12]

Apple doesn't use UEFI for the M1 and M2 Macs. Does that mean that the kernel has to have Apple-specific dtbs for the hardware?

It goes through m1n1, asahi's shim bootloader, into uboot, and from there into grub or whatever.

[Developer12]

There's very few Windows ARM devices compared to the number of ARM devices in general and even fewer Windows 10 compliant ARM devices. You're both correct, but the vast majority of ARM devices have a variety of standards and non-standard (proprietary/locked) methods of loading the OS. Windows is practically irrelevant to ARM right now.

This is one thing that the PC world has going for it: the amount of standards that govern the way it boots, talks to peripherals, etc are generally complied with by all the OEMs. That's not the case in the ARM world. Hopefully the RISC-V world will lean more towards and improve upon PC than ARM in this way (and hopefully ARM doesn't end up so dominant for the sake of security and privacy).

The RISC-V world is already worse. They actively encourage fragmentation as a core philosophy.

[pierro78]

not that Im going to get an arm laptop this high end any time soon, im looking at the new snapdragons and mediateks with the powervr gpus

reading the "linux on ARM" news I started searching for a cheaper used ARM laptop and it looks like debian is installable on the 2020 Samsung Galaxy Book S ( https://twitter.com/pierro_78/status...11584166895620 ) so I ordered one for $270 on ebay (plus a lot of taxes as I am in France) ... I am curious if anybody has an opinion on how well debian/linux will run on this Galaxy Book S ??? will I miss a lot of drivers or other stuff ???