Skip Navigation

Sorry, Mario, but the software is in a different architecture.

Meme transcription:

[Guy looking happy:] Hey, there’s a Linux version of that program I like

[Guy looking disappointed:] Closed Source, no ARM support

42 comments
  • My Little Rant on Risc V and Arm vs x86, because I have an opportunity to dump this here and get it off out of my system.

    RISC systems will maybe perhaps take over market share from x86 in the mobile laptop space, but essentially there's no point in anything else. If I remember correctly, RISC came before CISC in computing, and many old mainframes were RISC. But then people started thinking: "What if we can do multiple operations in a single instruction?" And therefore CISC was born and he did wonders for performance.

    Yes, the reduced instructions are very nice for battery life. Who doesn't like good battery life? People who like performance, that's for sure. So if you run a programme that is programmed for CISC primarily, and then you just change the compiling target to a RISC system, then you will basically use the same battery life, but with worse performance than just using a CISC system, Since multiple clocks now need to do something that has happened in a single clock on CISC. I fully understand that having a monopoly on computing hardware is very bad. I don't get the hype around arming normal computers because it will just shift the monopoly from one to another, the harm to innovation remains. Risc V is interesting because it would break the monopoly, but the problem is it uses a pushover license. So companies would reap all of the benefits for developing a proprietary risk system, and everyone who likes to compete is free to use the reduced, almost unusable base spec. I mean, compare the BSD kernel to the Linux kernel. It's nowhere close. So with that being said, I think x86 in public domain would be the nicest thing to happen. Thank you for listening to my useless TED talk.

    Edit: Thanks for the interesting replies, people! Time will tell what will have happened, so let's find out together.

42 comments