Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Marc Joliet <marcec@×××.de>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Will ARM take over the world?
Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2012 19:54:58
Message-Id: 20121209205324.1465e313@marcec.hunte.us
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Will ARM take over the world? by Florian Philipp
1 Am Sun, 09 Dec 2012 20:24:58 +0100
2 schrieb Florian Philipp <lists@×××××××××××.net>:
3
4 > Am 09.12.2012 04:51, schrieb Michael Mol:
5 > > On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 10:25 PM, Grant <emailgrant@×××××.com> wrote:
6 > >> It seems like ARM processors will destroy x86 before too long. Does anyone
7 > >> think this won't happen?
8 > >
9 > > It's looking promising. Not that I have a horse in the race, but I
10 > > very much like ARM's low power consumption. The way I see it, they're
11 > > only a short list of features away from obliterating x86:
12 > >
13 > > * I'd like to see fast division.
14 > > I keep hearing about how this or that is slow because of ARM's lack of
15 > > strong division.
16 > >
17 > > * I'd like to see a modern baseline of strong instructions.
18 > > x86 kept continually improving in a very fragmented way, but there
19 > > were, from time to time, baseline collections of feature sets you
20 > > could expect all processors to have. i386 represented one. i686
21 > > represented one. Currently, it's x86_64, which implies not only a
22 > > 64-bit flattened address space and a departure from real mode, but
23 > > also a collection of SIMD instruction sets and other features
24 > > developed between the release of the Pentium Pro and AMD's Hammer
25 > > architecture.
26 > >
27 > > ARM just feels...fragmented. And I don't have the impression I could
28 > > write my code assuming the availability of SIMD (presuming I use
29 > > things like OpenMP to expand my code to leverage it, rather than
30 > > writing processor-specific code. Though OpenCL could very well
31 > > alleviate that issue.)
32 > >
33 >
34 > +1 with regard to fragmentation. What I especially despise is the lack
35 > of a common boot infrastructure. If I'm not mistaken, it is still
36 > impossible to make a kernel that boots on all (or at least a large
37 > subset of all) ARM platforms [1].
38
39 > [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/496400/
40
41 I'm no embedded developer, but I read recently that the first batch of
42 multi-platform ARM support has been merged in Linux 3.7:
43
44 http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Kernel-Log-Coming-in-3-7-Part-5-CPU-and-platform-code-1758293.html
45
46 --
47 Marc Joliet
48 --
49 "People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we
50 don't" - Bjarne Stroustrup

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