Paolo RedaelliI loved Apple. Not the Apple of DRMs and its golden prison where you can’t really control your hardware; I loved the Apple that loved Software Libero. Then it mutated into a company that crushes people freedoms while smiling.
I like to have control of my hardware. I don’t want to use hardware that treats me like an enemy as DRM-laded machines do or from a company that is actively trying to kill the idea of Software Libero.
So I’ve mixed reactions when reading about Apple M1. I’m happy that they find a way to get so good performances but I fear their “proprietary-ness”, their total-closure toward other OSes. I would change my mind when Apple will help people port Linux, BSD and other free-as-in-freedom operative systems. I fear I will have to wait for a long time as they have been actively doing the opposite in recent years.
Today I’ve read
Why Is Apple’s M1 Chip So Fast?
Real world experience with the new M1 Macs have started ticking in. They are fast. Real fast. But why? What is the magic?
There are a couple of passages that striked me:
- Instead of adding ever more general-purpose CPU cores, Apple has followed another strategy: They have started adding ever more specialized chips doing a few specialized tasks.
… and- “Unified Memory Architecture”
- Addind specialized chips, Paola, Agnus, Blitter… shall I go on?
- UMA, accessible to CPU, GPU and other specialized processing units. The very same concept of “Chip memory” in Amiga.
Now I do dearly hope that some company use the same recipe, discovered by Amiga almost 40 years ago.
I hope that the claims made about RISC-V in
Micro Magic RISC-V Core Claims to Beat Apple M1 and Arm Cortex-A9
are realistic.
We are living interesing times.
Meanwhile hackers have been able to port Linux to Apple silicon, while Micro Magic RiscV still hasn’t materialized