Posts by FIA

Google Cloud is super keen to keep certain customers on pricey Intel VMs

Re: Avx512 on Zen 4

Also, AVX512 is available in all Zen 4, not just the server stuff. (IIRC intel don't have any desktop CPUs with it enabled yet?)

Is it a bird? Is it Microsoft Office? No, it's Onlyoffice: Version 7.2 released

As such, its competitive position up against the other free office suites is that Onlyoffice has a more modern ribbon-based interface,

First they laugh at you.

Then they fight you.

Then you win.

A match made in heaven: systemd comes to Windows Subsystem for Linux

Re: "extinguishing systemd"

Why would they replace a robust, multi user, networked OS with fine grained security with a robust, multi user, networked OS that would require them to open source the entire stack?

Re: Better idea.

With Linux the lessons learned tend to apply for life, whereas with Windows they only apply until the next patch?

Hmmm, as a BSD user (where 'ipconfig' still does what it's done for years) I often find Linux a confusing place when dropped into the command line, requiring a good Googling to get where I want.

I'm not sure it's any more consistant than Windows these days, not if you're an occasional user who goes for a headline distro.

BT CEO orders staff: Back to the office or risk 'disciplinary action'

If he's in somewhere like the UK where the smoke breaks are outside then it probably does little to his overall lifespan.

Now, the real question, does it impact your lifespan in a way that's greater than the increased excersise benefits it?

Firefox 105 is here, and it's faster and more memory-frugal

Re: Vertical Tabs

Just looked in Windows, and FF 105 has options to auto update or not.

I will also say FF on the mac has never restarted without asking me first. (That's the one I tend to leave running for weeks on end). Just looked, it's on 104 and isn't bugging me.

Oh, as to their annoyance level, personally: zero.

Grand Theft Auto 6 maker confirms source code, vids stolen in cyber-heist

Re: Should, if anything, enhance their business

GTA 5 online takes a dogs age to load. The reason, a JSON parser that ends up calling strlen... a lot!

Ad blockers struggle under Chrome's new rules

Okay, maybe you could've provided a link or two, but if we've reached the point where someone saying they don't support homophobia gets (at the time of writing) 15 downvotes and zero upvotes then maybe I need a new sarcastic internet forum to shout blythely into.

Any suggestions?

I guess the Windows one (wassit called?) which is based on Chrome anyway is not a great idea?

Edge is fine, I use it at work as my other browser as I dislike Chrome, and my work soul has already been sold to Microsoft.

Chromium is a googleless version of Chrome that works well too.

A refined Apple desktop debuts ahead of Wednesday’s big iThing launch

Re: Memories

People back then were not better programmers. Programming was just different. Their programs were just as buggy which is why everything used to crash all the time.

I'd go so far as to say back then people were in general worse programmers. Not from a problem solving sense, that's just down to the individual, but simply by having a much smaller foundation of knowlage to build upon.

Programming is a complex, relativly immature skill, and as with any skill it takes a few generations before all the lessons really get learnt.

Programmers now have the benefit of the many years of learning. The increases in memory and computational power allow languages with features that would've been impossible 30-40 years ago, (Rust springs to mind here).

Thing is, we're still only at the beginning, really.

In another 20-30 years programmers will be better still and the tools they used will have evolved further to eliminate more common classes of easy mistakes.

SiFive RISC-V CPU cores to power NASA's next spaceflight computer

Re: I always assumed that NASA would be ...

Shame, I was hoping you would have Ryzen to the challenge, EPYC though it was.

(There we’re many Opterons to choose from too, although I will admit to using a sledgehammer to get that last one in; maybe even a piledriver).

Apple Silicon takes a back seat at iPhone-heavy launch event

Didn't iPhones basically stagnate around the iPhone 6?

That's the one I remember all the media being really annoyed that wasn't revolutionary. (although at the same time no-one seemed to know what revolution they expected... just that it should revolve somehow...)

I've just ordered the new phone as every year for the past 3 years I've looked as the new one is released and gone 'meh, mine's still fast and the camera is still good', but this year my current phone started to go wrong.

That's pretty much the reason to upgrade.

(aside: Whilst the name is dumb, I do like the UI faffery around the display hole, it's a clever way to utilise what is otherwise a slight irritation. It felt the most 'apple like' UI innovation in several years).

California passes bill requiring salary ranges on job listings

Re: Will this actually help ?

...as opposed to coming out of?

Surely all the money my employer has is what is used to pay me? What am I shocked about?

Open source databases: What are they and why do they matter?

Re: Nuff said

devs would rather be an Oracle developer rather than a PostgresSQL DBA.

Trust me, no dev wants to be an Oracle developer. PL/SQL is arcaine, and using Oracle as anything more than a database is a path to vendor lock in hell.

Oracle's a very competent database, but using it feels like typing all the way back to the 90s.

COMMIT WORK; RELEASE;

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

Re: It does suck

It's an interesting argument. I recently re-installed W95 and really had to think for a second when hitting windows key and typing didn't do anything.

Windows 7 had it nailed, I think, personally.

Ahhh, but pre Win 7 then Win 2K had it nailed. :)

I think this tells use that maybe gentle evolution is better than Windows 8 UI overhaul. (as in the features you just end up using without realising it, like the type to search thing in the start menu.)

California asks people not to charge EVs during heatwave

Re: Does this apply to everyone?

Some of them have space for up to 50 (yes, FIFTY) names and numbers too.

(I do love how CASIO basically looked at all the advances in computing in the late 90s and went 'Yeah, that's great and all, but I think we're kind of done...')

NASA scrubs Artemis SLS Moon rocket launch

Re: 200% trust in NASA

What do you mean? I loved my Commodore 128.

I mean it was a technical masterpiece, 2 computers in one, a C64 and a (possibly not that fast) CP/M compatable Z80, technically great....

I never used the Z80 + CP/M part of it though.

...but possibly overkill because of that.

Most people never used them as anything other than a C64. From a business POV, that's a terrible thing. Selling a computer with half going unused.

Re: 200% trust in NASA

For things to succeed, you kind of need trust in both.

Unmanaged engineers go and make things like the Commodore 128. A brilliant piece of engineering; but possibly not the best idea.

Oh, hang on, I've just invoked Commodore in a 'pro management' rant, ignore me.

Re: 200% trust in congress

The first launch will put a starship configured as a tanker into Earth orbit. Next, between 4 and 12 launches will fill the tanker with fuel. Not sure why they are not a bit more precise with exactly how many fuel launches are needed.

They could do it in 4, but they get more Green Shield stamps if they do it in 12, and Elon really wants that new toaster.

UK's largest water company investigates datacenters' use as drought hits

Re: A quarter?

Quoting 'anothercynic' from above:

600 million litres of water daily is a lot. That's 600,000 cubic metres, or an average of 240 Olympic-size swimming pools, *per day*.

Re: Hosepipe bans

I know I am always careful with water use and use rainwater harvesting into water butts for garden watering and car washing, but I still can't fathom why anyone would insist on staying on an unmetered charge?

It's that human instinct to assume you're being taken for a ride.

I remained rated for years. Then between selling houses I moved back in with my parents for a couple of years, co-incided with them getting a water meter.

When my mum pointed out that even though I'd moved back in her bills were a third of the rates I finally got it. :)

Microsoft finds critical hole in operating system that for once isn't Windows

strncpy is also not safe, because it doesn't force a terminating null,

Just tell it your calloc’d buffer is one byte shorter than it really is.

Scientists use supercritical carbon dioxide to power the grid

Re: I assumed incorrect units stated

I believe the 30kW figure was really 30kWh or in layman's terms 30 measured units of electricity.

Yes, (as a layman), I meant 30KWh a day, with an average of about 1.25KWh every, erm, hour.

I suppose this is just one of those laymen vs 'correct' term confusions. (KCal vs Cal, GiB vs GB).

At the end of the day it gave me a mental 'yardstick' which was really the point. :)

Thank you, it was the temporal component of the Watt I was missing. :)

Okay, I may regret this? But why is it wrong?

It ran for an hour (ish) and produced 10KW, so 10KWh.

It then goes on to say 10KW is about a third of the daily use of a US home, implying that a US home uses around 30KW a day, or about 1.25KWh on average.

What am I missing??

Re: For the scientists -->

No. This is The Register, you’re not being cynical enough.

You’ve got to deride 11+ years of work with an implied ‘meh, well it’s fine. But give me an afternoon in the shed…’ as you flick the metaphorical dog end into the gutter and wander off.

Microsoft brings more Arm64 support and an updated expiry date to Dev Channel Windows

Re: MS does not care about Windows on ARM

Just because it doesn't work the same way as existing ARM stuff - which is pretty much ALL embedded devices like smartphones and routers - does not mean they are doing it wrong.

This.

Apple have been booting OSX on ARM hardware since the first iPhone. Why would they spend development resources and time to change the way this works just because a different standard has emerged in the meantime. They don't wish to run Linux on their hardware so it would be wasted effort.

This isn't the same as activly trying to prevent Linux running.

If you want to get Linux up and running in a VM on an M1, they'll even tell you how.

(Hey, if you really want to complain about Apple not doing Linux right on ARM, then berate them for not using RISCOS as the bootloader. ;) )

Apple says 2017 MacBooks don't have FlexGate defect. Aussie tribunal orders a fix anyway

Re: Happy with their Choices

He cares what his partner's relatives use because, like many tech geeks, he (and I) want our friends, etc., to get good economic value for their tech investments,

Surely you want your friends and family to be happy with their tech investments too?

Not everyone places economic value at the top of their personal check list, that one took me years to understand.

Plus, if you've spent many years being free tech support for everyone, it can be very liberating to just go 'Oh... is that an Apple, no, sorry I don't know anything about them'.

and for them to not support corporate assholes.

If you want a phone that does 'modern things' you're kind of out of luck here unfortunatly. :(

I understand his partner's relatives viewpoint: they want to throw (perhaps "too much") money at problems they won't want to spend their time solving.

Yes. Time has value too, especially as you age. The amount of 'fucking around' I want to spend getting a piece of technology to work in my 40s is far lower than the amount I'd spend in my 20s.

On a practical note, is it possible to easily open a modern Mac and replace the RAM and HD within? Will they work with "standard" RAM and HDs/SSDs?

Nope. :(

The poster above was referring to an old mac, if it's one you can replace the RAM in then it will take some standard (probably laptop) RAM. I had an iMac from 2013ish, that took standard SO-DIMMs of some variety. (DDR3 I think?)

Replacing the HD in it was sustantially harder though, and involved removing the bonded screen. Which then required special tape to re-attach. Not for the feint hearted.

Re: Acceptance is seldom financially beneficial.

Genuinely confused as to what your point is here?

If it’s any help I’m confused from a nearly 5 year old iPhone 8 with 84% battery life.

(Sure the SSD is on the way out but the battery is grand).

Re: Why Do They Insist On Blatantly Denying Anything Is Wrong?

If you can replace the RAM in it just use standard PC RAM, it’ll be fine.

Same with the HD.

You might need the utility to enable TRIM if putting an SSD in an older mac.

I can't get them away from Apple as they always say "Its just so easy and connects so easily with my other devices".

Why do you care what other people use? It sounds like they’re happy with their choices?

Epson says ink pad saturation behind 'end of service life' warning on inkjet printers

Re: Brother

Just buy a second hand Brother laser printer and be done with this inkjet racket.

If you buy a new Brother laser make sure to google how to reset the low toner warning on that too. :D

For occasional use though, can't agree more, bought a colour laser about 8 years ago, still on the original toner set, was a complete overkill purchase, but I expect it to last me many many more years yet.

Mind you, parents did the same, then had a desire for decent photo printers. The A3 Epson they got is annoyingly lovely print wise.

Your AI-generated digital artwork may not be protected by US copyright

You chose the subject, you chose the camera, you framed the image, you decided on the filters used, you decided to delete or keep it based upon the result.

It's your image.

She then edited DALL-E 2's image to create the final sleek cover for the glossy magazine. Who owns the copyright? Who is the author of the image?

She is. She used her natural creativity and some very advanced tools to generate a picture.

There are many many aspects of life that have been made easier by technology. This is just another. Just because the output of a statistical inferance engine appears 'clever' doesn't mean it is.

When the cover of Cosmo is generated by an AI that's told to "Generate the cover of Cosmopolitan' and can work out what's apropriate (perhaps by enquiry) then maybe there's a debate to be had.

Google's ChromeOS Flex turned my old MacBook into new frustrations

Re: moving back to Windows was a relief

And the biggest gripe of all: No Visual Studio. VSCode is just fucking terrible, and I've yet to find an IDE that even comes close to VS. (Not technically Linux's fault, I know, but it's still a daily annoyance.)

Now, I will caveat this first.. I do like VSCode, for the low low price of 'free' it works well, and it allows me to do remote development with a fairly esoteric build system. (Running VSCode on windows and developing on WSL).

However, I will wave the Jetbrains flag if you're after an alternative IDE. I use Ryder instead of VS for C# development, and would hate to have to return to VS.

Weirdly, because of the afformentioned odd build system I haven't managed to get CLion working for my C stuff at home (It's remote stuff isn't quite as configurable that I've found) so can't comment on it's suitability, but if it's as good as the Java and C# IDEs then it's well worth a trial.

Re: moving back to Windows was a relief

It's also easy to spot those who regularly use it; they're the ones who get roped in to sort out friends and family with Windows woes.

It's also worth pointing out that Windows has improved in this area too.

My mum used to know how to re-install Windows XP; as she needed to do it every 6 months or so.

She's not had to do anything like that since Windows 7 came along.

Her current machine runs Windows 10, and does what she needs it to do, reliably and without me having to go round at all really. (Last thing was setting up a new printer, and even that was setting up the printer, Windows just saw it and worked).

True, it's got all the MS telematary in, but she doesn't care about that. She just wants to be able to print off the odd sewing pattern, and for that it does the job well.

I know a linux distro would do all this too, not favouring one over the other, just pointing out that if the data collection aspect of windows isn't an issue for you then it's not quite the clusterfuck of crashes that XP was.

Re: Alternatively

.. but unfortunately, the degradation of performance with every Windows update marches on unabated

Do you really find that?

I must say since Windows 7 I've not really noticed. The XP days of a 6 month re-install to make things usable again are long gone.

These days I find the only thing that slows windows down is whatever virus software is added.

I've just got my latest corporate laptop, I'm a dev, however the image seems to be a very generic 'Office user' one.

The new laptop benchmarks at double the speed of my previous laptop. (Which is a 3 year old core i7 and is still fast by most standards).

In use, it's maybe 2 or 3 times slower, as... well... sophos.

I've de-camped to a VM on my desktop with a vanilla Win 11 install and it's lovely.

It irritates the crap out of me though every time I look at what is now an expensive paperweight sat on a self, it's only purpose in life to change a password every 3 months.

NetBSD 9.3: A 2022 OS that can run on late-1980s hardware

Re: Thank you Commentards!

Granted, reading a man page maybe isn't as easy as a typical cut-paste walkthrough on somebody's blog, but if you want to start to _understand_ rather than just _do_, those well-crafted man pages can be a valuable resource. And reading them is a skill worth having.

Learning to read is one of the great skills in IT, as in not just skimming for the answer, but making a brew, setting some time aside and reading the man page or documentation properly. (This often takes a few reads).

Once you've done that you'll understand whatever it is much better.

A trick I've learnt over the years is to stop every few paragraphs, and ask yourself if you actually understand what you're reading, if you don't go back and start again.

Most people lose the thread of the thing they're reading a few paragraphs before they realise, there'll be a term that you won't understand fully, and it won't register as you're reading it, but that'll be the start of the incomprehension.

Re: Thank you Commentards!

Life is too short for such things to have novelty appeal for me.

That's a good attitude to have, sometimes once the fun in the playing with stuff stops then just having stuff that works is what you need.

I used FreeBSD for my server for this reason, I grew up on NetBSD and could still install it and get an internet router for my home network setup very very quickly; whereas I'd be lost trying to do the same in Mint.

If friends ask for a non windows OS though, I point them at Mint.

Man pages. Dear god no.....

Man pages are one of the things that really (used to) set NetBSD apart from Linux for me.

All the documentation is there, I can read it on a terminal if I have to.

Using linux and finding that 'the documentation is available in POD format at <url>' used to be really unhelpful when I was ssh'd in without a browser handy.

GNU has improved in this area over the last few years too.

Heh, as a long time NetBSD (now FreeBSD) user a lot of the comments just sound like the differences between different *nixs than anything else.

I find similar experiences on Linux when I occasionally use it. Sure I know uparrow won't produce ^[ but I still have never worked out how to paste in 'vi' without the auto formatting kicking in. (I know it's vim, but vim on the 'BSDs by default isn't configured to do it, and I can never work out what I need to change).

It's just unfamiliarity with a thing that looks simliar to the thing you're familier with. Like driving someone elses car for the first time.

Modern Linux is, well, a modern OS. By default, it supports things like cursor keys, wireless networks, and multiple disk partitions, some of which may be in use by other OSes. The top command uses fancy PC console features such as bold fonts.

Whilst I know what you mean with that comment, as NetBSD can feel very archaic to someone used to Linux, it's probably still worth pointing out that NetBSD is also a modern OS. It's quite happy running on multi core servers with plenty of RAM as well as an Amiga.

(I personally started using it as my home router OS on a Risc PC 24ish years ago, and a decendent of that install was still running until I switched to FreeBSD a few years ago. The hardware was a multi core AMD part by that point though, with a few gig more memory than the Risc PC).

I switched to FreeBSD to get ZFS and Plex support, however there are still aspects of NetBSD I miss. It's a lovely OS.

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

Interesting article.

However, I think Windows has moved on since you last used it.

New accounts haven't been full Admin since Vista, and group policy means it can be locked down quite quite well. (My work laptop gives me _no_ admin access, I have to apply for a seperate account and use that username/password if I require privilage escaltion). This is mandated at the domain level and is not something I can change. Additionally as the BIOS has been well locked down I couldn't even install Linux if I desired.

Is there an equivalent of group policy for Linux?

I'd argue Windows is insecure by design.

Not on a technical level. Internally everything is an object, and can have ACLs applied. These permisisons are also quite fine grained and can be applied to many many things. This may not be used well when consumer Windows was forced on the NT kernel, but by design NT is secure, and has a more flexible default security model than Linux.

Today's Windows is still built on a standalone PC operating system foundation. It was never, ever meant to work in a networked world.

Todays windows is built atop NT, which was designed by people who worked on VMS, I expect it was.

So, security holes that existed back in the day of Windows for Workgroups, 1991, are still with us today in 2022 and Windows 11.

Do you have an example of this?

WfW was a 16bit (32bitish?) shell running atop of DOS. Windows 11 is based on NT. I'm genuinely interested to know of a security hole that was in WfW that's still in 11?

Microsoft sunsets Windows built-in data leak prevention

"The sunset process will follow the standard Windows client feature lifecycle,"

Dear Google....

See how that link doesn't link to one of those naff party poppers and a banner that says 'SUPRISE!!!'.

Please take note.

Sincerely,

FIA.

GitLab plans to delete dormant projects in free accounts

Re: A year seems a bit too low... Three years maybe?

If you're working with third party libraries in your product then you should have copies of those libraries locally; your build system should not be pulling from systems that aren't under your control.

If you're working with third party open source software it's probably a good idea to grab the source code too.

If you're not doing either of these things let this article be a wake up call. ;)

(Finding you need to issue a hotfix and you can't build your production codebase is not a fun place to be in).

Re: Why change?

I know a company using code written in 1988 for running much of their accounts system.

This is something I try and explain to young developers. It's fine to want to use the latest and greatest all the time, and you should always be aware of these things.

However, most software development isn't the cool new mobile app, for most of us, it's something business related, either as an internal system or software used by businesses.

The reality is, unless you fuck up badly the systems most of us work on will (and should) last for many many years. This means by definition even the thing built with the latest and greatest will at some point become old hat, and still require maintenance.

You simply can't re-write entire systems continuously.

But, if you design and implement systems considering this, you might write maintainable systems, and that's the key.

If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Or, if it's fit for purpose, why re-write it.

I'm currently working on webifying a piece of software with some code that goes back to the early 90s. It's financial, so requires yearly updates to keep up with the law, it would be unfeasable to re-write it from scratch; however by the time we've finished webifying it and putting it in the cloud there won't be any 90s era code left.

This process has been going on for 3 years, and I reckon there's another 4-5 years until we can stop supporting the existing codebase. (This work is in parallel with existing feature development and work, as it's still a living product).

However, at the end we should have a web version of a product that can trace it's lineage back to a DOS era program, and with customers who will have been using it continuously since then.

This concerns users of the free tier. How would they compete? How would MS not owning Github reduce their hosting costs?

(I suppose the MS induced migration may have some effect).

Pay for your repository hosting and your problem goes away.

Specs leak of 5.7GHz AMD Ryzen 7000 chips with double the L2 cache

Re: WfW 3.11?

From what little I can gleen it sounds like a divide by zero error in some timing loop. (It probably takes 0ms to run something that should've taken longer I expect...)

There's patches available on the web.

Re: WfW 3.11?

Not sure about W3.1, but Windows 95 chokes if your CPU is too fast.

Why the end of Optane is bad news for all IT

Re: Amazing... But also a bit stupid

1. If you have, say, a terabyte of non-volatile RAM, why do you need disks or paging at all?

You need paging because it's currently how computers map memory, if you remove that you have to solve the relocatable code problem and a few others.

You don't needs disks.

Why do you want to impose an emulated disk drive on a machine which doesn't need disk drives at all?

I don't.

But I do still want a way to file and organise my data.

A memory FS would have to work differently, but I don't see why you wouldn't want a system to allow you organise your data. Sure, if you load a program from the filing system you'd just be executing the code where it is in memory (non volatile data aside).

The reason I mentioned paging is that volatile data. It wouldn't be a huge extension for a current OS to move little used volatile data to persistant RAM. This would mean a shutdown would be 'copy the rest of the volatile data and turn off', with apropriate 'restarting from RAM' support in whatever firmware you had would give you the 'always on' computer.

Unless you're proposing fixing another class of problems programs will still need at least the concept of a running instance, you still need something to kill when it goes wrong. This means you will still need the abstraction of 'the thing needed to run a program' vs 'a running instance of that program'.

No current OS organizes its RAM as a filesystem.

And nor should they, but if all your data is in RAM there's still a requirement to mark bits of RAM as 'that picture from holiday last year', and maybe group bits of RAM as 'Last years holiday pictures'.

Also, most modern OSs organise their RAM hierachically, based on CPU locality for example. (NUMA) So they do have the concept of different 'types' of RAM. This would be required to properly utilise static RAM, until the static RAM can withstand the (basically) infinite re-write cycles of DRAM.

Right now I am typing in a browser window. That browser has, no doubt, many allocated areas of RAM. They are not files. There is no directory.

It also has many tempory files, and many resources it loads (icons, language translations). It still needs a way to locate and refer to these.

Why do you want to impose an emulated disk drive on a machine which doesn't need disk drives at all?

I don't, I want a system to file and organise data, but the lower abstraction wouldn't be talking to a disk drive, it would be using the persistent memory in the computer.

I submit the answer is "because that's the design I am familiar with. It's the way I know."

You may well be correct here; generally most people are blind to a new way of thinking until it's presented to them complete.

But personally I switched OS half a dozen times. Spectrum BASIC to VAX/VMS to CP/M to RISC OS to OS/2 to Windows 95 to Windows NT to Linux to Linux and Mac OS X. (Not counting all the many ones I used at work.)

All of those had different abstractions. Some had filesystems; some didn't. Some had subdirectories; some didn't. Some had file types, some just had clunky three-letter file extensions.

They all had filesystems. My ZX81 could load a program by name, this requires at least some organisation on the tape. That's a simple filesystem. I've not used VAX/VMS or CP/M, but I have used the rest you list.

RISC OS is a decent example, it has modules, which are basically extensions of the ROM modules in the BBC MOS, yet with ResourceFS in RISC OS 3 modules would still write entries to ResourceFS, so they could access sections of their memory as if they were files. They didn't take up more memory, there's no 'HD emulation' (ResourceFS literally is told 'make this chunk of RMA appear as a file in your namespace'). But it does allow you to access resources easly, and also replace them.

Re: Amazing... But also a bit stupid

Yeah, I don't see what's wrong with a filing system.

A filing system is just that, a system for filing.

It doesn't have to be on a 'traditional' block device. Running a program would memory map the read only sections and provide pages in traditional RAM for variables and volatile data.

A paging system that knows certain ram is non volatile could easly ensure idle tasks are 'swapped' to persistent memory. (Most OSs have the concept of NUMA and memory locality).

It feels like we're trying to remove the wrong abstraction here.

I do agree that Optane should've lived on though. It does seem the logical conclusion.

Linus Torvalds releases Linux 5.19 – using Asahi on an Arm-powered Mac

Re: @qbix

Until Apple open up the additions, and the compiler writers and distro owners incorporate the changes into the source tree, I would expect this to remain to be the case.

Like the apple related ones here you mean?

Apple, as an Architecture License holder, takes ARM designs, and builds their own processor around them.

But in order to call them aarch64 (which they do) they also have to comply with the ARM validation tests.

I suspect that the stellar performance of the M1 and M2 processors is as a result of some of these changes.

Do you have any evidence of this? What changes specifically are you referring to?

Could it just not be that Apple have designed a good desktop CPU, whereas most other ARMs that people interact with are designed with thought to power consumption first and performance second?

I'm attempting some aarch64 coding on the M1 at the moment, nothing more than baby steps, but I'm also not looking at anything other than the ARM ISA documentation and it's all working just fine so far.

Apple do have some other custom bits on the chip to do various thing, but this isn't any different from any other SoC vendor adding their additions.

Whilst Apple have made absolutly no effort to support Linux, or help out, I'm not convinced there's any 'secret magic' in the CPU core, other than it being a well designed high performance implementation of the ARM 64 bit architecture.