why use x86 other than to support proprietary software? [LWN.net]

why use x86 other than to support proprietary software?

Posted Jun 1, 2008 4:58 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: why use x86 other than to support proprietary software? by dlang
Parent article: Intel CEO: Smaller gadgets will expand market (AP)

Probably ARM platform is going to be the most popular after x86-64/x86 platforms.

Cell phones, routers, NAS devices, etc etc. All those run Linux on ARM platforms. Most of them
are getting to the point were they can run Debian proper.. pretty much anything with the
ability to use flash media, 200mhz proccessor, and 64megs of ram (is what I figure).

Some examples...
KuroBox Pro
http://www.revogear.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=KU...
400mhz ARM9, 128MB DDR2 RAM, 256MB NAND Flash, USB 2.0 support, SATA support, 1x PCI Express,
1Gb/s LAN.

NeoRunner Phone
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner
480x640 resolution, 802.11 Wifi, USB OTG, 400mhz ARM9, 128MB SDRAM, 256MB NAND flash.

Beagle Board
http://beagleboard.org/
600mhz proccessor, DVI-D video-out, 128MB ram, 256MB flash, SDHC support, USB OTG, Stereo Out,
Stereo In.

I would _love_ to have a mini-laptop with something like the BeagleBoard in it. The battery
life would be _fantastic_. I could probably last days for the same amount of power that is
required to run my Dell Laptop.

http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/architecture.html
Those new ARMv7-based CPUs are fantastic.. those Cortex processors are pretty cool stuff. Even
some people are talking about multiprocessor support. They've added 64/128bit SIMD stuff in
the form of the NEON instruction set to vastly boost multimedia support.

Very cool. They seem to be approaching the same level of performance that you'd get with
low-end x86 systems.

Texas Instrument is finally coming around also, releasing massive amounts of documentation and
even are trying to get 2D/3D acceleration chips for emdedded systems to be openned up for
Linux folk. (I think)

This article explains pretty well the sort of costs that are associated with the legacy CISC
system for embedded systems. With large systems it doesn't matter so much as the logic in the
cpu to translate and deal with the x86 CISC instruction set is minor compared to the rest of
the system.. but when you shrink the CPU to embedded sizes those costs start to add up.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/risc-vs-cisc-mobil...

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software is tested on x86, and may not work on other architectures

Posted Jun 1, 2008 8:10 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

yes ARM is probably the next architecture to support, but that doesn't mean that the various
developers are going to take the time to do so.

the advantage of x86 is compatibility, it doesn't matter if it's closed source or open source,
it's almost certainly tested on x86 and it may or may not work with other architectures.

this isn't limited to compiled code either. I've run into perl code that was written on AIX
(powerpc) that didn't work on Linux without needing to go in and write compatibility routines
to handle the big/little endian difference.

software is tested on x86, and may not work on other architectures

Posted Jun 1, 2008 9:06 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

> yes ARM is probably the next architecture to support, but that doesn't mean that the various
developers are going to take the time to do so.

Your right. It's the users that make it work. Always has, always will. The only reason why any
free software isn't supported on a platform is because not many users use that platform.

I've used PowerPC Debian in the past and I very rarely ran into any software that didn't work
that wasn't closed source. I even shared the same home directory between my PowerPC laptop and
my x86 desktop and that worked well (except for certain programs that used sqlite in a
non-endianess safe manner)

Hell during that period time my Ibook was better supported then any x86 laptop that I ever
used.. before Intel started helping out with getting Linux centrino support up to speed.

I figure as long as you have decent Linux kernel support for a platform, and the GNU stuff
supports a platform then most open source software should be mostly just a compile away. The
most important part is just having users to compile and test the software. Without those there
isn't any point anyways.

software is tested on x86, and may not work on other architectures

Posted Jun 1, 2008 9:20 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Oh.. in terms of embedded development ARM surpassed x86 in popularity about 3 years ago.
(according to linuxdevices.com) 

According to Debian's popularitycontest Arm is now 3rd favorite behind x86 and x86-64. It beat
out the Apple-Linux crowd..

When it comes to fairly popular architectures like the ARM there really isn't going to be much
of a barrier for any open source application if the designers remotely cared about
portability. (If they didn't care much about portability then generally they didn't care much
about quality either, anyways...)