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Intel Says Clover Trail Atom CPU Won't Work With Linux
girlmad tips this news from the Inquirer:
"Intel's Clover Trail Atom processor can be seen in various non-descript laptops around IDF and the firm provided a lot of architectural details on the chip, confirming details such as dual-core and a number of power states. However Intel said Clover Trail 'is a Windows 8 chip' and that 'the chip cannot run Linux.' While Intel's claim that Clover Trail won't run Linux is not quite true — after all, it is an x86 instruction set, so there is no major reason why the Linux kernel and userland will not run — given that the firm will not support it, device makers are unlikely to produce Linux Clover Trail devices for their own support reasons."
Chips aren't exactly designed to "run Linux" or any other OS. It's Linux that supports CPUs.. NOT the other way around.
All this means, is that Intel doesn't want to help. It does not mean it won't run Linux. Linux always finds a way to work.
I can't see what possible benefit it is to Intel to deliberately limit the market for their processors. Unless they are doing this for Microsoft's benefit, in which case, surely, there are anti-trust implications?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Doubt it. They can choose to support or not support whatever they want. They just can't actively use their current monopoly position to harm competition in another market (operating systems). If they put in some special instructions that actively sabotage the Linux kernel from running, that would be one thing. From what it sounds like though, they are merely not providing drivers/source code for Linux for some of the CPU features for this platform. Of course since a lot of geeks will try to get Linux running on a toaster for the lulz, I expect this to only be a short-term hindrance.
If there is one thing life has taught me it is that anything can run Linux. All intel has done now is simply issued a challenge which my guess is won't take long for some skilled hardware hacker.
The expression "won't work with Linux" can usually be translated as "don't know if it works with Linux and we would not support it if we did".
.... "But it is running in front of me now" I said.
I first met it with OS/2 rather than Linux when I was using internet banking in its early days. I rang the bank Help Desk (about a technical matter not a financial one) and it came out that I was on OS/2. "But Sir" they said "it doesn't run on OS/2, you have to use Windows!"
They were so shocked, as if I were being really irresponsible, that I feared they would cut off my account; but they didn't
So, as an aside, isn't the entire point of a tech aggregator to provide a technical summary? Not just copy and paste the article's summary... anyway...
FTFA:
Intel went to great lengths to highlight the new P-states and C-states in which it can completely shut down the clock of a core. The firm said the operating system needs to provide "hints" to the processor in order to make use of power states and it seems likely that such hints are presently not provided by the Linux kernel in order to properly make use of Clover Trail.
In other words, Intel has added new capabilities to Clover Trail that allow enhanced power management, and Linux doesn't currently support it. Anyone who thinks that this will continue to be the case for much longer is a moron, especially if Intel continues to release its architecture datasheets, which we have no reason to think that they won't.
The article really says: It can't run Linux because there's no support for it in Linux, and there's no support for it because it's literally brand-new.
IANAL, but I recall that Microsoft got in a bit of trouble because early versions of Windows were designed NOT to run on top of Digital Research DOS. Not going out of your way to support something is one thing, being exclusionary and abusing a monopoly position is another
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
Typo - I rang them on a financial matter. I would not have been daft enough to seek their advice on OS/2.
Sigh. Why is this one of the first reactions when a manufacturer doesn't do something you want them to do? Seriously, Intel not only does not have a monopoly of tablet processors, I would say they don't even have a majority. ARM processors power the vast majority of tablets. Intel is only hurting themselves by not supporting Linux.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Don't be dull. The problem isn't that Intel may decide not to support Linux but that Intel may be creating a vertical agreement with Microsoft, viz.:
Intel said Clover Trail 'is a Windows 8 chip'
Er my mac runs OSX, Linux and Windows...
Many of us have been expecting this sort of thing for a while. I suspect at the heart of it this has less to do with Microsofft and more to do with TPTB wanting to make inroads against general-purpose computing... hopefully that cat is safely out of [reach of] their bag...
"Not supported" is very different from "Can't run Linux". I would call this monopoly abuse.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I choose my operating system, and I choose my chips. And this chip won't be entering my house, unless someone in the kernel community decides to do Intel a huge favor and support it without them.
And better yet, Apple actively supports the use of Windows on Macs - Bootcamp - in addition to the VM vendors.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
It is the first time ever that Intel announced direct hostility toward some piece of software -- I hope, it's just someone's fuckup and not a policy change.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I'm sure they'll see the error of their ways both in support when the countless numbers who don't read this article try to use linux, and lack of sales in the future because I can with great certainty tell you I'm not buying one.
This seems pretty shady on the part of Intel.
Of course there are probably some MS crazies out there who are like "Finally! A Chip that won't support that evil convoluted operating system!!!!!!"
If Intel says "won't run" then most linux geeks will take it as a challenge and it WILL run (although maybe not all features will be enabled), if Intel "won't give support", then well, it just hurts the market, since we'll be seeing a lot more overpriced devices with (probably) crappy OSes
UEFI secure boot with MS keys hardwired, perhaps?
Oh wait, the Windows logo specs say it must be optional for x86.
Computer, especially smartphone and tablet are now a cash cow business. The happy few that have the biggest money will do anything to stop the flow of money to them. All of us will have a single choice: to pay them no matter what. Look like how the giant petrol companies are doing business.
...into the Appelsk walled garden that Windows 8 appears to be heralding in (Windows Store only apps, "for your own security, comfort and ease of use", coming to you in Windows 8.5/9). Last thing our walled gardeners want is an alternative OS weed like Linux, working perfectly on the same hardware...
No. The offence is making the false claim that it will not run Linux.
Didn't RTFA. So what's the short version? Does "Can't run Linux" mean that it current'y can't the OS because the kernel needs to be adapted to it? Or, does it mean that this will only execute code signed by Microsoft and that in no way in hell will it run anything else?
Life is not for the lazy.
Please, notify the European Commission.
I am positively sure they will not like this.
(I don't have any appropriate channels, otherwise I would have done it)
So by extension Android is out too?
Unless the new version of Android happens to be Windows 8 based, yes.
how, in a media swamped with Apple mania, do you get attention for a processor launch?
Exactly. In my (relatively limited) experience, Intel's wireless chipsets work much better with Linux than other manufacturer's, and though I could be wrong, I'm pretty sure it's because they actually develop their Linux drivers alongside their Windows drivers. If they changed this policy, then I seriously fret for the state of wireless support in Linux. I, too, sincerely hope it's someone's fuckup.
Provided the linux kernel is used in android and that intel tries so much to enter the android market, I highly doubt that their new power efficient chip wont work with linux. It would mean they won't ship it in android as well.
They never actually did it, and they never got into trouble for considering it either.
There was a beta of one version of Windows 3.x that put up a message along the lines of "This software is unreliable and unstable and will EAT YOUR BABY if you run it over DR-DOS" (well, words to that effect.) IIRC it was only in the beta, the version that was sold would run on everything.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Do you even know what you are talking about or is your only response to levy insults at other people? I would think someone with your low UID would know better.
First of all if you even remotely looked at my posts, you would see I'm no fan of MS. I believe they should have been broken up. Second if you read or understood the case against MS, the government went after MS for PCs not computers in general as they don't have a monopoly on servers, especially Unix/Linux servers. Also having a monopoly is not per se illegal. Abusing a monopoly is where they crossed the line. As such how can Intel be fined for taking actions when they are a minority in a market that they don't control. If Intel hedges their bets on Windows and MS only, they are idiots considering how MS has treated their past partners.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Is there any source for this statement besides The Inquirer? They're basically a tech tabloid and have gotten a lot of things wrong (or overly sensationalized) in the past. I checked Anandtech and Tom's Hardware, both of which covered Intel's presentations this week. No mention of this. I did a Google search for "clover trail" "Windows 8 chip" and found ONLY the Inquirer article and other articles and blog posts directly quoting and linking to it. No reliable third-party tech sites saying the same thing.
This doesn't make sense in terms of Intel's overall philosophy. They have always been good about Linux support for nearly everything else – they don't want to get themselves tied in too closely with Microsoft, for fear that this would reduce their leverage.
I think this story is bullshit. A generous interpretation would be that the reporter heard that the chip ran Windows 8 and that Linux *currently* did not have the necessary support for the "new P-states and C-states" in Clover Trail, and misinterpreted that as saying that only Windows 8 will ever be officially supported. A less generous interpretation is that the Inquirer knowingly made up this crap to get more page hits. In any case, I expect Intel to make their actual position clear soon enough, now that this story seems to have gone viral.
...I've already got an AMD board that won't run Linux.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Yeah, but they deliberately preclude OS-X running on non Apple PCs. They protect their hardware 'monopoly', while relaxing their software 'monopoly'
Let's say the reason is either one.
Let's say that Intel wants to limit the audience for the chip, and cut their own sales. Let's say that AMD, VIA, and the ARMs makers will be delighted to fill in any vacuum.
Do.We.Care?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
They tried building their own Linux distro. It sucked!
They tried giving docs and nobody cared.
They tried writing drivers themselves and again they sucked.
So now they are double daring every developer saying win8 is technically better than anything they coded
Actually it means Intel won't support running Linux on it.
Apparently Wintel is alive and well.
The article is less than an A4 page in length. That is the short version.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
At least, it will run on it.
Jay! ...Go AMD!
Again, Intel is only hurting themselves. The vast majority of tablets run ARM and not Windows. It's not anti-trust for Intel to make bad strategic decisions in a market that they have very little influence.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The chip embeds a new silicon technology that will recognize Linux by efficiency of code to be executed.
If that'll be too much efficient, then the chip will melt itself.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
if it's a win8 only chip, it quite possibly includes the damn "Trusted Boot" feature that MS wants on all hardware with UEFI. This means that unless the fucking bootloader and OS is blessed by MS, it wont run.
Now if this is only for those Win8 Tablets and such that MS wants to get to market, then the chip may well run Linux or any other OS that's x86 based though w/o the blessings of Intel. Another issue is that Intel May restrict sales of this to OEM's with a minimum of 10k per order. Another possibility is that Intel could limit this chip's initial sales due to fab problems and/or to prevent canabilizing higher profit chip sales if this chip is as big an improvement as the C2D was over the Netburst/P4 architecture.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Interesting perspective, but Microsoft obviously did something bad enough to compel them to pay Caldera at least 155 million (http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/news2/microsoft-settles-dr-dos-antitrust-lawsuit) . Something tells me if this was just a blip in a beta, they'd take it to court.
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
There must be a special subsystem on the die that checks if the OS ID is linux-gnu and annihilates itself in a puff of smoke if it is so.
Not only that, Intel actually originally developed Meego b'cos Windows 7 did not support the Atom. Now of course, it's Tizen.
I think that seeing Microsoft porting Windows 8 to ARM, they decided to come out w/ a CPU that rivals it in power management, and got Microsoft to support this. They may be targeting their initial production of this CPU @ Windows RT tablets & phones, in which case, Linux may be on the backburner. Once the Linux kernel supports it, then they can make it one of the target platforms for Tizen, and also promote it for Android.
Given that Intel has to avoid losing the entire tablet & phone market to ARM, I doubt they'd be stupid enough to write off either the Windows RT or the ARM market. Windows RT is better in the sense that Clover Trail could run Windows (win64) software that ARM can't.
And, yes, I know OS X and Linux share a common heritage.
What color is the sky in your world? They're both Unixlike but that's as far as that goes. Linux is descended from Minix and runs a GNU userland. OSX is descended from NeXTStep which is descended from BSD. They are almost as different and differently-descended as they could be and still be able to run much of the same code without major changes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
actually, parent is correct. There are antitrust issues to be investigated here. This has nothing to do with choosing to support something or not, and is a very bad move by intel. If it were choosing they would say "this processor is not designed for linux" not "this processor will not *work* with linux". Sounds small, but it's of critical importance. The reality is that the antitrust issue is not with Intel - it is with Microsoft.
Why should anyone use the x86 instruction set if they're explicitly saying that things are not compatible? All they're trying to say to people is "please use ARM", which is not the smartest idea. That is entirely different from what intel is implying, which is that the BIOS issues regarding windows 8 preventing other operating systems from running...that issue from before.
So all this is, is basically antitrust fodder against MS.
Until such time the Linux kernel uses the new power management instructions of Clover Trail to do power management. Otherwise, Android, Tizen and other Linux may work on Clover Trail, but they would be a power hog while running on Clover Trail.
That's not how it's worded from the article. They could have said "it's not designed to support linux", not "it wont' run on linux".
This is completely irrelevant, and AMD does not make low-power x86 chips anymore.
They most certainly do. On the very low side, they make Geode. In the middle end (for low power) they have Semprons at 8 watts. They also have a varieety of SOC.
Reason for this one is the GPL. If GPL didn't force the source code to be opened, the Linux guys there too would have been allowed this privilege. But if they were to do the same things that the Windows guys did, they'd have to open up what they did, which could end up revealing design details about Intel's wireless chipset that would enable competitors - those who make other WiFi chips - to make exact clones of Intel's wireless chipsets. So obviously, Intel avoids letting that go out.
I'm willing to bet that had they had a FBSD team, this would not have been an issue. With the OBSD guys though, it might have been.
If they put in some special instructions that actively sabotage the Linux kernel from running, that would be one thing.
And some aspects of UEFI Secure Boot have been accused of sabotage, such as the fact that a driver can carry only one company's signature.
And, yes, I know OS X and Linux share a common heritage.
Actually, no they don't. Mac OS X is, at heart, a MACH micro-kernel, running a lot of FreeBSD userland, tons of libs from either NetBSD and OpenBSD, and quite a lot of GNU tools & utilities. It's a hodge-podge of stuff, really.
Linux is not Unix, it's a re-creation of Unix. Mac OS X is not Unix, but it's definitely closer to BSD Unix.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
There is a big difference here.
Microsoft took steps to make sure the DR DOS wouldn't run windows, where it could.
Intel is just not going the extra step to allow Linux compatibility. If the Open Source guys are as smart as they think they are there should be an open source patch shortly to allow Linux to run with that chip. Now if Intel has a fit over this, then they may be crossing the line, if they just let it continue and if there is an issue the help desk goes sorry we do not support Linux on this chip. That is just keeping the status quo.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
AMD, VIA and ARM may also take Intels lead on this too.
Linux for the desktop has such a small market share, however it is a vocal, demanding, and very diverse minority. That they figure that they will loose more supporting Linux for this chip then adding support.
Dealing with smaller low volume vendors, Distributions that are made that really put the chips features at a disadvantage, or just loud and obnoxious support calls.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Hasn't happened *yet*.
And no one says that a few port mods might be done to tweak the kernel or distros towards getting support. Of course, there's the Microsoft patent tax.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
There aren't any antitrust issues here. Intel can do whatever it wants with it's processors so long as it doesn't use it's processors (I'm not even sure you could call Intel a monopoly in processors, but that would be for a court to decide) to give another of their products an unfair advantage.
Pretty much the same for Microsoft. Unless you think somehow Microsoft strong armed Intel into it, and can prove it in court. Even then it would be difficult. You would have to prove that Microsoft abused it's monopoly position in OSes to do so in a way that harms consumers. Good luck with that.
"It is the first time ever that Intel announced direct hostility toward some piece of software -- I hope, it's just someone's fuckup and not a policy change."
Such change could represent an opportunity for AMD, which was once the "anti-Intel/underdog/enthusiast CPU".
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
They got sued by either Novel or Caldera, IIRC, and lost. In fact, when Novel recently filed suite against them for what they did with WordPerfect, one of Microsoft's defense was that Novel are precluded because of that earlier suite.
Not exactly "never got into trouble for considering it". Yes, you are correct that that code was never in any released product.
Shachar
I can tell you that I ran windows 3.0 and 3.1 on DRDos 6 with no problems whatsoever. I never owned or used Microsoft DOS. So if there was some compatibility or stability problem I never saw it.
Seems like an odd statement to me given the past history of Intel's friendliness to Linux in the past. This rhetoric makes Intel appear as though they want to distance themselves from the Linux community where they could have simply said "Linux isn't supported (right now)."
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
"Intel is just not going the extra step to allow Linux compatibility"
According to TFA: However Intel said Clover Trail "is a Windows 8 chip" and that "the chip cannot run Linux".
That's not saying "We won't support it" that's LYING IN MARKET about the capabilities of its chip and causing direct harm to a competing kernel and subset of operating systems based upon that kernel.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yes, if by "trouble" you mean some people on Slashdot didn't like it and Microsoft made lots of profit from their decisions.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Cry "havok" and let LOOSE the support for Linux!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Why would they say this? Why not just say we are only supporting this chip for windows? As meaned x86 means linux either will or it will be trivial to port. This is almost as good as "why would anyone need more than 64k of ram?" Heck if you said you had an electric razor that wouldn't run linux that would just be a challenge to the community not a statement of "perfect tense" fact.
"There aren't any antitrust issues here."
Bullshit, Intel is falsely advertising that a chip with all the standard (for today) x86 instructions will not run Linux, which is an x86 compatible kernel, and says that the chip is for Windows 8. Intel is colluding with Microsoft in this instance to create an anticompetitive market.
FALSE ADVERTISING IS STILL ILLEGAL AND AN ANTITRUST ISSUE WHEN A CONVICTED MONOPOLIST IS INVOLVED.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
What exactly did you mean? Did you mean "says who" that Secure Boot has been accused of sabotage? Or did you mean "says who" that that a driver can carry only one company's signature? If "yes", which?
> Intel is just not going the extra step to allow Linux
> compatibility.
Unlike Windows, Linux does not require that cpu manufacturers take any extra steps for compatibility. If this thing is not fully compatible with the X86 instruction set Intel should just say so. In that case it will just be another architecture for Linux to be ported to. No big deal: it runs on dozens already.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I think this mostly due to the PowerVR SGX graphics engine (remember the gma500 poulsbo). for the gma500 intel made a binary linux driver that did not impress anyone. I guess for clovertrail they are just not bothering with releasing a binary driver.
So it might work fine as a CPU, but have no graphics acceleration. however for a tablet chip that cannot play video or composite a desktop in software, it might be effectively useless.
Well, I never thought I'd be standing up for Microsoft, at least a little, But IMHO they had at least a LITTLE justification for putting up the warning message. Old Windows HAD to make MANY patches into the DOS resident code, and it depended on MANY undocumented data areas inside the DOS resident code. Any DOS clone, if it was to have a chance of running Windows, had to be very carefully engineered to match all those undocumented locations in DOS. The odds of Digital Research being able to guess all the exact locations that Windows depends on, and will depend on, is somewhat slight.
Linux is not descended from Minix
It once shared a tiny bit of code, and now it doesn't (and none of your links actually address the issue of descendance!) That doesn't make it not descended from. It just makes it, you know, utterly unlike it. As for whether Linux necessarily runs a GNU userland, when we talk about a "Linux" "Operating System" we're typically talking about the Linux kernel with a GNU userland, built with a GNU toolchain, and using a GNU libc. If I meant "Android" I would have said "Android", which while it clearly is built atop Linux, is not even called "Android Linux" and is not meant to run Linux applications, though it can be coaxed into doing so in many cases.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You know that this is a processor, right? A processor is something that you use at both phones,tablets, netbooks, notebooks, desktops, workstations and servers. Also, all of those categories are fuzzy, and processors do leak to the neigboring ones.
For the looks of it, this one is a tablet's processor. On tablets, iOS has most of the market, Linux is a minority and Windows does not even mark outside of the error margin, that last OS is the one Intel is going to support. Of course, it will leak to netbooks and notebooks, where Windows rules (but is losing space fast for OS-X).
I have no idea why Intel would even make such a decision, and I doubt AMD, VIA, or ARM management agree with it. From the public info it just doesn't make any sense, there must be something Intel is hidding.
Rethinking email
It's perfectly possible for it to have a virtual memory model that's incompatible with Linux or something like that.
You'd think this would make it incompatible with Windows as well but you never know.
No sig today...
I also don't see how people would want to use Office on their tablets - unless there is a docking station, and Office becomes much, much, MUCH less weighty than it is now, but none of those are reality now.
But MS is beting the farm on it, and looks like Intel is joining the club. Those companies normaly know what they are doing marketing-wise (most of the time, anyway - "The internet is a fad" is there to proof they are not infallible).
Got popcorn?
Rethinking email
Wow, wrong information twice in a row.
Linux is descended from Minix
Linux is not descended from Minix. Linux was fresh from the ground up, but Minix inspired Linus to write it (after a back-and-forth with Tannenbaum.) SCO tried to argue that Linux had code stolen from Minix, but even Tannenbaum rejected that accusation.
It is utter crap and should be avoided at all costs.
No problem intel, I will warn people away from your products and towards AMD's offerings.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
AMD recently bought a maker of large/dense ARM systems if that helps.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The usual jargon for that is "Linux won't be supported". My first translation of "won't work with Linux" is "we'll actively sabotage Linux"... But, well, marketing language is ambiguous, one'd better not take too much out of it.
Rethinking email
No distance is safe.
Well, there's always from orbit.
Those damn monkeys had us worried for a while.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Little technical understanding by marketing folks, they just parrot company policy/thinkspeak - that is how you get statements like "Cannot Run xxx". Then again, with Intel scrapping for marketshare why would they broadcast non-support of potential customers ? Some kind of partnership with a certain software company ? Who knows.
Not a happy shareholder lately.
Lurking in the desert
Yes -- it will be a major hurdle for people switching to Linux. I imagine most people who used linux at one point or other installed it on their current computer to give it a try before diving all the way in -- I did. People aren't going to want to buy a new computer to try out a free OS.
Does that mean this is not a general purpose computing machine? If that's true, then I think there's all sorts of legal problems ahead of them.
I believe there's certain loopholes in various laws to allow loopholes for general purpose computing hardware.
I don't think there's legal issues. I'd hate to think that only general purpose computing machines were legal.
On the other hand, Windows is (allegedly) a general-purpose OS, so I'd expect that a CPU running Windows would work best if it was a general-purpose CPU.
Firstly, because there would have to be an awfully compelling reason for me to buy into a less-powerful platform if I could get a more-powerful one relatively easily.
Secondly, because Microsoft has a long history of "interface of the month" types of technologies, so even if you're using the hardware only for Windows, you'd want as much flexibility as possible - they're good enough at breaking things on general-purpose hardware without adding limitations into the mix.
count on one hand the number of Windows 8 users worldwide
7 of them
Just how many fingers do you have?!?
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
So, the company that has open-source, document video drivers for Linux, and has apparently worked closely with Valve on their Linux gaming project, with great praise from Valve is *also* working with Microsoft to destroy Linux. Gotcha.
PROTIP: Linux *rules* servers and professional gear.
You disregard it... you're *fucked*.
Wanna bet?
And there are still millions of WingozeXP lusers that still don't want W7!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Let's say that Intel wants to limit the audience for the chip, and cut their own sales. Let's say that AMD, VIA, and the ARMs makers will be delighted to fill in any vacuum.
What vacuum? This is not the only cpu that Intel will sell. If a vendor cares they can buy a different Intel cpu.
Uhh...just how many fingers do you have on that hand?!?
Correct. Intel has just said that it does not want to participate at all in the Android tablet market.
They put all their chips on Window 8 in the tablet market.
Wow, this is mindblowingly stupid.
If intel doesn't warm to being able to run Android, they're going to end up in a world of hurt. This should be an easy call, but apparently someone at Intel still thinks the Windows monopoly matters and can impact the tablet space. There may be a small chance that's true, but its absolutely moronic Intel isn't hedging its bets by making sure its procs can run Android too.
They deserve to fall hard for making such a poor choice.
No, that's not what TFA says:
"The firm said the operating system needs to provide "hints" to the processor in order to make use of power states and it seems likely that such hints are presently not provided by the Linux kernel in order to properly make use of Clover Trail."
I doubt this will be very difficult for Linux to put into the kernel.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
What I find odd about Intel's phrasing is that they seem to be (voluntarily, no less) throwing water on their chances of selling this particular silicon to somebody who wants to run linux on it...
Unless there is something seriously whacked about this part compared to a conventional x86 part, it should require, at most, modest tweaks to get Linux up and going. Now, support for the fancy new power management features and whatnot may or may not be there(just as the world is infested with motherboards with ACPI so broken that all OSes that aren't the version of Windows they were designed to sell with might as well just not touch ACPI at all to the degree possible); but that is quite different from 'cannot run'.
It seems particularly odd given that Intel is fairly likely to, for simple reasons of efficiency, try to use similar power management tricks across their CPU lineup, from SoCs to high end Xeons, and it'll be a cold day in hell before the bulk Xeon buyers of the world accept a chip that won't run Linux, or vmkernel, or the assorted other non-windows things that are entirely routine in server land.
From the public info it just doesn't make any sense, there must be something Intel is hidding.
Since this kind of thing happens regularly, it is not hard to figure out exactly what is happening (with the error margin less than 0.0001%):
Intel signed a non-compete agreement with Microsoft; a contract to produce a chip exclusively for MS, with the added benefit of stomping any attempt to install a non-MS OS (aka Linux).
This is similar to the agreement under which Samsung produces CPUs for Apple, except Apple does not worry so excessively about Linux to add DRM to their CPUs.
Linux for the desktop has such a small market share
That may be true for "desktop" as in the user's environment but not "desktop" as in PC hardware. Linux has some success as the server running in the closet, many of those machines are former desktop PCs.
...into the Appelsk walled garden that Windows 8 appears to be heralding in (Windows Store only apps, "for your own security, comfort and ease of use", coming to you in Windows 8.5/9). Last thing our walled gardeners want is an alternative OS weed like Linux, working perfectly on the same hardware...
That does seem to be the plan these days; but the CPU level seems an odd place to do it. If you've got a TPM and the right crypto sauce in your bootloader(which, along with everything and the kitchen sink, UEFI certainly can and frequently does) you can lock unsigned code out without any expensive and time consuming(and potentially buggy) dicking around with the instruction set, or memory layout, or connector geometry, or anything like that.
Really, while they still can work, control-through-churn is an obsolete strategy. Churning your software, APIs, instruction sets, etc. hurts your own developers and leads to time and bugs, and churning your proprietary connectors only keeps the chinese clone shops at bay for about a week. The future belongs to cryptographically enforced incompatibility laid on top of as much cheap, reliable, standardized stuff as you can get away with using...
... Intel is falsely advertising that a chip with all the standard (for today) x86 instructions will not run Linux, which is an x86 compatible kernel, and says that the chip is for Windows 8 ...
Backwards compatibility is not the issue. It seems to be an issue of supporting new features. For example from the article:
"Intel went to great lengths to highlight the new P-states and C-states in which it can completely shut down the clock of a core. The firm said the operating system needs to provide "hints" to the processor in order to make use of power states and it seems likely that such hints are presently not provided by the Linux kernel in order to properly make use of Clover Trail."
There aren't any antitrust issues here. Intel can do whatever it wants with it's processors so long as it doesn't use it's processors ... to give another of their products an unfair advantage.
Not true. The range of Anti-Trust includes oligarchic rings. If Intel purposely altered the chip by examining instructions that Linux calls but Windows 8 Metro doesn't, and "conveniently" removes/alters those instructions, it's anti-trust. It's a variant on collusion. If you have multiple parties of overlapping business sectors working to block other products, it triggers legal implications, just different ones.
As stated elsewhere, the geeks will get it working again, but the move would result in lost development resource just fixing the problem Intel made.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
... the whole "Linux always finds a way to work" irks me. Linux doesn't fine a way, some extremely talented and hard working individuals spend vast amounts of their time building/designing/testing code to support hardware. It's not magical ...
So you are saying Linux kernels are people? ;-)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE1ODA
Maybe it's intentional, maybe it's not, but it does seem to be a trend.
Koolade, much?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
which could end up revealing design details about Intel's wireless chipset that would enable competitors - those who make other WiFi chips - to make exact clones of Intel's wireless chipsets
Palm trees and 8
Maybe Intel is betting on Windows 8.
Palm trees and 8
Clovertrail is more than "a processor". It's a SOC - system-on-a-chip. As such it's likely to be missing some of the things that the x86 linux distributions are going to want. Like plug&play support. Or ACPI. Or USB support. Or SATA support. Or a southbridge. Or a northbridge. Or something else that I haven't thought of that's present in all current PCs but might not be present in a SOC system.
Are existing x86 linux distributions going to work on a machine that doesn't support plug&play? How about SATA drives?
Maybe Intel is courting a relationship with Hollywood, and wants to reassure those media barons that they are "coming around" and helping to kill off personal computing. Intel might be trying to position itself as the CPU maker for "media consumption devices," which will not run operating systems that allow users to run unapproved software or (heaven forbid) software that can make a copy of a movie.
That is the point of restricted boot environments, Windows 8, iOS, etc.: to kill personal computing, and build a new world in which home computers are nothing more than glorified cable TV receivers.
Palm trees and 8
That's not saying "We won't support it" that's LYING IN MARKET about the capabilities of its chip and causing direct harm to a competing kernel and subset of operating systems based upon that kernel.
To which Intel-developed-and-sold competing kernel are you referring? If it's not Intel-developed-and-sold, it's not as if Intel is using a dominant market position in desktop/laptop microprocessors to support another of its products (and it's also not clear that Intel has a dominant market position in small system-on-a-chip processors such as Clover Trail).
From what I can tell Intel is creating API calls to these new processors to shutdown cores. These APIs are being provided to MS only. Best case is that Linux on these processors will be less efficient. Worse case is that the processors don't run properly (until it is reverse engineered) in Linux.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Have you ever heard of the term "hackintosh"? Apple does not support running OS X. It doesn't stop you from loading it on a PC. Are you also complaining that you can't run AIX on a Solaris machine?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Considering it's Windows 8, at least we can safely assume Windows 8 won't work on that chip either since Windows 8 doesn't work. Way to level the playing field.
By the way, what chip has ever been designed specifically to include Linux? They still make it work.
Tell that to an iOS user.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I think I could count on one hand the number of Windows 8 users worldwide and I think that 7 of them are bored with it.
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
Yeah they FUD it to death ! They did it verbally using that line from the beta and by paying industry magazines to repeat that message even thought it was a lie.
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
Actually, OS X is Unix. One might say that the Darwin (OS X) kernel is a descendant of BSD, since Unix services are implemented in kernel using BSD (derived) code. On the other hand, the kernel is based on Mach 3 which was historically run as a microkernel, but is now packed so full of high level Unix code that it is anything but "micro".
Of course, OS X implements other capabilities (I/O Kit, Cooa, etc) in addition to those in the Unix spec./p
Yes. GNU/Linux distros will be very limited, but there are plenty of non-GNU ones that'll do ok.
Rethinking email
I know so many words. If I ate them all, I would get fat. And then what would George think of me?
Really? I have OS X on my thinkpad.
OK, s/preclude OS-X from running on non Apple PCs/make it sufficiently difficult to run OS X on non-Apple PCs, and sue anybody who tries to sell machines with OS X preinstalled, so as to keep the number of people who do it low enough that it doesn't matter/.
Why make a completely different chip just for anti-Linux DRM? It makes way more sense to make some generic chip you can program the DRM into.
Intel (and MS) can't really expect this thing to have volume enough to be cheap, as the market is praticaly completely taken by OSs that it won't support (iOS and Linux). That is, unless both do really belive Windows 8 will take the market over.
Rethinking email
No, I remember it well, and it was a specific check to print the scary message and do nothing else. It was quite clearly marketing driven, not a lick of technological reasoning behind it.
Infuriate left and right
Tell that to a Windows Phone or Android user.
He was very clearly talking about desktops and laptops.
Yes, because I don't have the faith in the "free market" that many Libertarians have.
I wonder if this is potentially talking about the mess that is ACPI?
There aren't any antitrust issues here. Intel can do whatever it wants with it's processors
Not everyone believes that a company can do whatever it wants.
I expect that an unofficial (non-Intel) patch to support the various Clover Trail power management features will be available relatively soon after the processor is widely available. The Linux development community is quite capable when the need arises.
But it doesn't matter, because both Apple and Microsoft are doing all they can to turn desktops and laptops into the same kind of locked-down walled garden that smartphones suffer from.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I doubt this will be very difficult for Linux to put into the kernel.
As long as the (full) documentation is released. OK: it could be reverse engineered, but that can sometimes be hard -- look at the problems getting good drivers for NVIDIA chips.
They could stop Linux doing something if some instructions had to be provided with cryptographically signed values in some registers, but I doubt that is the case.
Although I have no personal knowledge about this situation, if I were to speculate on rationale for the position that Intel is taking, it's power/electrical related.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that they way it is probably designed, you can't just turn on both cores at full clock rate and turn on the GPU w/o creating electrical/thermal instability or melting the chip. They probably have to do lots of dynamic voltage/frequency tradeoffs to get their chip to run which considers the whole system power/heat, thermals (temperature), and electrical current battery supply. Also the parameters to control the chip probably vary greatly from chip-to-chip with manufacturing process, so the per-chip information likely is stored somewhere undocumented. Of course Intel likely has a fancy driver that does all this stuff, but it probably needs constant attention (callbacks) from the OS and information from the OS about workloads, but they...
1. Are only tuning this for Win8 (don't have time to do anything else)
2. Don't see the required callback and information support in the current linux kernel
3. Don't want to release the API information to linux kernel writer so that competitors learn their secret sauce and piggyback on their hard work
They are probably reasonably sure that running a "default" x86 linux on their chip that doesn't adapt the voltage and frequency with workload will likely be a recipe for either electrical/thermal instability or perhaps even a meltdown. Using the code phrase that "linux" work seems to be the biggest clue here...
So, either the 'UEFI must not be disablable' requirement no longer applies just to ARM-based systems, or this is an end run around the intel exception so that even if the bootloader is unlockable, there's no other system you can load on the thing anyway, rendering the 'unlockable on intel' argument meaningless. It's just the kind of crap Microsoft loves to pull. Sounds just like their support for ODF in Office. It 'works', but it doesn't work, based on a loophole Microsoft found in the spec that allowed them to build 'ODF support' that doesn't support anybody else's ODF docs properly.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
That is entirely different from what intel is implying, which is that the BIOS issues regarding windows 8 preventing other operating systems from running
I don't see anything in TFA to indicate that Intel is implying that. Perhaps you're inferring that, but I'm not sure what those "BIOS issues" are; if you mean "UEFI issues", that's part of Microsoft's requirements for UEFI-for-ARM, not UEFI-for-x86.
TFA doesn't say where the statements in question were made, but the picture accompanying the article makes it look as if it were an Intel presentation somewhere, and if I look for Intel presentations in San Francisco around this date, it suggests this was probably the San Francisco 2012 Intel Developer Forum.
Given that, a little more searching found an Ars Technica item about this; it says
Still somewhat speculative ("likely in part because of..."), but a bit less handwaving than the Inquirer piece. Intel do have hardware features that they don't publicly document, and those power management features may fall into that category.
Your comprehension must not be up to par, sir. Anyone should know I'm talking about Intel's claim that "This will not run Linux" and "This is a Windows 8 Chip" means linux kernel vs Microsoft kernel.
Intel is using a dominant market position to say "This won't run Linux, use Windows 8 instead!" when the fact is it's x86 instructions with other stuff.
Now, the REAL question that stands out is "Is this article misquoting/quoting out of context?"
Given what I'm reading elsewhere. No, it is not.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The reason why you're modded down is because you've inserted a completely inconsequential reference to Visual Studio.
If it has an incompatible memory model, it wouldn't be x86 anymore, would it?
You could do that because that code was disabled in the production version - though still present.
For the technical details see this fine article.
Real life is overrated.
Your comprehension must not be up to par, sir. Anyone should know I'm talking about Intel's claim that "This will not run Linux" and "This is a Windows 8 Chip" means linux kernel vs Microsoft kernel.
Somebody's skills aren't up to par; I'd vote for the person who spoke of "a competing kernel" without indicating why Intel would care about two competing kernels when they make neither and have supported both and without bringing up collusion - the only thing that could be at issue here would be collusion between Microsoft and Intel, so I don't think anybody could go after Intel alone on an anti-trust issue, they'd have to go after both Intel and Microsoft.
(I'm also a bit skeptical that any antitrust authority would give a rat's ass about Intel just stating that "this chip will not run Linux" - assuming they really did say that; the Ars Technica piece merely says that the Inquirer is claiming that they said that, and are only themselves reporting what David Perlmutter said. I rather doubt Linux developers would be dissuaded from trying to make Clover Trail work merely because Intel says it won't - heck, it might encourage them. It's only a big issue if Intel are telling the truth, e.g. if you have to support the new power management features to run on Clover Trail at all and if Intel are only documenting those features in non-public documents.)
Intel is using a dominant market position
So this chip expected to be used for desktop/laptop computing to a significant degree? Intel hardly has a dominant market position for tablet computing (and Microsoft doesn't have one, either).
to say "This won't run Linux, use Windows 8 instead!"
...which means that, if there are any antitrust issues, they'd have to involve collusion, given that Windows 8 isn't an Intel operating system.
I wonder if Microsoft subsidized the development of this chip.
Life is not for the lazy.
"they'd have to go after both Intel and Microsoft. "
If you look at my other comments, you'd see you've been beaten to that punch already.
"So this chip expected to be used for desktop/laptop computing to a significant degree? Intel hardly has a dominant market position for tablet computing (and Microsoft doesn't have one, either)."
No, they both have a dominant market position for COMPUTING IN GENERAL. That includes tablet computing as part of it, whereas phone computing is a totally different story.
"...which means that, if there are any antitrust issues, they'd have to involve collusion, given that Windows 8 isn't an Intel operating system."
Again, if you bothered to read my other comments..........
Comprehension is hard, isn't it?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Enterprise customers please note Enterprise Linux versions will not run on any intel chips as those chips lack features needed for Linux kernel 4.0 onwards.
So you're predicting that the developers of enterprise features for Linux will deliberately punish the makers of a significant platform for enterprise Linux for not publishing information necessary to allow Linux to run on some tablets that use a processor that doesn't have much market share on tablets with an OS that doesn't have much market share on tablets?
how about not having those remote admin back doors in the first place? ..or at least having them disabled by default via a hardware jumper?
You'd seriously give up public access to general purpose computing because you fear malware? I guarantee you that in this dystopia you're supporting, the ONLY people who will still have some computing freedom left will be the malware authors...though backdoors/flaws in the 'trusted computing' stack.
of course, we could have sensible laws that do not support such false scarcity in the market...but I guess that's too much to ask..
Well I do since amd and arm chips generally don't compare in terms of performance per watt these days. I guess it depends what your priorities are.
um.. they don't have to 'add' support. linux already runs on x86. They can only purposely break it which takes extra effort.
`Intel said Clover Trail "is a Windows 8 chip" and that "the chip cannot run Linux"'.
.. what a coincidence ...
..
So Windows 8 uses four primary partitions and `Clover Trail' won't run Linux
"there's a lot of software work that has to go into a chip to support it in an operating system".
What a load of b****x, I wonder what contractual inducements they got from Redmond to make it just so
AccountKiller
To many, watt does it matter? A few milliamps between friends. Sure it's nice to have lovely power conservation, but I see very few people moving the dials from default in any operating system. Add in any hypervisor, and in certainty, the CPUs go back to pegging the power meter.
Performance matters, don't get me wrong. Performance per watt isn't the publicly desired-metric you make it out to be--for better or worse.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The "DR DOS eats babies" message was used as proof of a pattern. MS was actually sued for their per-processor contracts, and using their market clout to kill DR's business. DR had some big contracts with major PC builders...until the builders got a visit from MS representatives. A few months later, DR was having to shutter their doors.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
90% of dektops/laptops still run Windows (=large volumes), and even if Windows 8 fails (like Vista), they will come back with Windows 9. It was the Windows PC hardware where Linux taken off and they are trying to do everything they can to stop its progress. They already started by locking down BIOS, and it looks like they plan to do the same to CPU. I have 0 clue how they plan to do this (be it a special chip or a "programmed" DRM), but the statement by Intel indicates that they are trying hard.
Some where, some Linux developer just yelled "Challenge Accepted" at his computer screen. I've got money that it'll be working before this thing hits the market.
"So this chip expected to be used for desktop/laptop computing to a significant degree? Intel hardly has a dominant market position for tablet computing (and Microsoft doesn't have one, either)."
No, they both have a dominant market position for COMPUTING IN GENERAL.
There's such a thing as "computing in general" wherein one can have a dominant market position? News to me. There appears to be a fairly vigorous tablet market without any of the tablets running Windows or Office, so it's not at all obvious that the arrival of Windows 8 x86 tablets will suddenly make the tablet market just like the desktop/laptop market.
That includes tablet computing as part of it, whereas phone computing is a totally different story.
How is phone computing not part of "computing in general" and tablet computing part of "computing in general"? So what parts of computing are included in "computing in general"?
The article grossly misrepresents Intel's position. Win 8 is a big marketing and product support target. NOBODY at Intel is stopping anyone from building a Linux distro for Clover Trail and in fact, there is a ton of Intel kernel and driver code that could be used. Don't confuse lack of joint marketing a la Win 8 launches with technical reality
Most published technical data esp about processors is OS agnostic (has to do with platform design considerations) The info is there if you want to write software support
if it's a win8 only chip, it quite possibly includes the damn "Trusted Boot" feature that MS wants on all hardware with UEFI. This means that unless the fucking bootloader and OS is blessed by MS, it wont run.
Unless you turn on "Custom Mode", which, according to Microsoft's Windows Hardware Certification Requirements for Client and Server Systems, has to be supported for "non-ARM systems" (see item 17 under "System.Fundamentals.Firmware.UEFISecureBoot"), or disable Secure Boot, which also has to be supported for "non-ARM systems" (see item 18 under "System.Fundamentals.Firmware.UEFISecureBoot").
Actually Apple hasn't used Atoms because Apple severely bifurcates the performance levels of their closed IOS (iPhone. iPad) ecosystem from that of the much faster OS/X-based Intel Core i-based Mac products. Atom actually outperforms most ARM procs but is much less powerful than the full out-of-order Core architecture cpus so it exists in a middle ground where Apple doesn't choose to have a product today. As performance requirements for phone/pad devices rise, Apple may wind up choosing to use x86 Atom esp if they bring OS/X OS components downward into that space. Atom could run OS/X (or IOS) nicely if Apple wanted it to.
Actually SeaMicro, the microserver vendor AMD bought uses Intel Atom processors and still does. Ironic, no?
Cory Doctorow wrote about this:
The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing
http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
"They" (the corporates) have seen how good Linux, Android and Free Software have become. They understand that leaving general purpose computing open would mean they cannot protect their current profit margins as software becomes more and more a commodity. Hence in order for them to "win" (have control over profit streams), they must make you "lose" (lose control over your own devices).
First came TPM in hardware. Fortunately users defeated this by making it optional and controlled by the device owner.
Apple were the first to successfully foist it on users and people were happy and smiled, "I love my Apple, I don't mind Apple having all the control for safety. What is there to worry about".
Now it is the turn of the Windows folks to lose control. Applications will pass through Microsoft censorship, hardware will be controlled by them, since only they will write (closed-source) software that can run on it. Still we will have people laughing a Richard Stallman's prescience, seeing this decades ago.
The Linux guys are being shut out now, since the Empire knows it must snuff out the Rebel Alliance to get complete control of the computing galaxy (and all the riches therein).
If you are still a believer in "walled gardens" ("I prefer convenience to control of my devices") then you ought to reconsider your views in light of these developments. For those that were always distrustful of the walled gardens, your fears are starting to come to pass, but at least you had the wisdom to recognize them. Now it is time to raise hue and cry about this. Corporates will listen to disgruntled customers if there are enough of them to threaten sales significantly. Blog your asses off about how Intel are doing the dirty on the tech community with their misleading statements.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE1ODA
Maybe it's intentional, maybe it's not
It's probably intentional that Apple haven't gone out of their way to make sure that Linux Just Works(TM) on their machines. They probably don't care that much about Linux-on-Macs one way or the other; I doubt they'd go out of their way to make it work or to make it not work.
but it does seem to be a trend.
I'm not sure there's a long-term trend to make it harder. It might have gotten a bit easier after the switch to x86, with more use of standard rather than custom glue chips.
And, if you actually look at the intel-gfx thread pointed to by the Phoronix article, and follow that into the Linux kernel mailing list, it might just have been a bug or, at least, unnecessary (mis)feature that was subsequently fixed/removed.
The Phoronix article also linked to a blog post about a non-Apple laptop that needed a bit of help to boot Debian from a USB installation and didn't support all the hardware, so it's not as if "not entirely happy to run Linux" is an Apple-only problem.
Ironic, yes.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
PROTIP: Linux *rules* servers and professional gear.
You disregard it... you're *fucked*.
Clover Trail is not intended for servers or professional gear, so maybe if Intel disregards Linux support for it, they're only "fucked" if that manages to provoke a level of nerd rage sufficient to get Intel competitors into a dominant position for servers and professional gear.
That chip is clearly aimed at tablets. 99% of its market is owned by iOS and Linux.
Rethinking email
Bullshit, Intel is falsely advertising
Please show me the advertisement that says, well... anything. A spokesman saying something is not an advertisement.
Intel is colluding with Microsoft
Really? Where did you learn this from? Oh, you just made that up. I see. Never mind, I'm sure that will hold up in a court of law. Dear Judge, I present irrefutable evidence that Intel and Microsoft were colluding... Khyber said so. I rest my case.
FALSE ADVERTISING IS STILL ILLEGAL AND AN ANTITRUST ISSUE WHEN A CONVICTED MONOPOLIST IS INVOLVED.
Yes, false advertising is illegal.
No, false advertising doesn't become an antitrust issue, ever.
There is no such thing as a "convicted monopolist", at least as how you intend to use it. Being a monopoly is not illegal, so you can not be convicted of it.
Any programmer worth their salt can count to at least 31 on one hand, and 1023 on two hands.
It's funny you should mention "monopoly pricing power" since Microsoft has pre-emptively announced fire sale pricing for Windows 8. The price of Windows upgrades has not changed substantially in 20 years, which tells me that they have no confidence in their own flagship selling on its merits.
The last time I remember Windows being so cheap was when you could get Windows 3.0 for $50, which is when I and a lot of the people I knew and worked with decided to take the plunge and get Windows for the first time.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
They did try their hand in the android market, half heartedly at least. I believe though that they only managed to convince ZTE to produce a phone with a single core atom based chip. The phone was a budget phone and by all accounts has severely limited access to the Android market due to many more complex apps being being dependent on ARM or specific graphics chips within the SOCs.
When The Register did a review of the phone they said it had plenty of performance, but that didn't change anything - the handset manufacturers were clearly in no mood to give up ARM, especially when you consider that some of the handset manufacturers also design and make their own SOCs.
Running back to Microsoft... Frankly the only surprise in that is that it took this long. EA, after a similarly disastrous outing in the Android Market are looking to do the same.
I imagine Nvidia aren't going to be best pleased at this apparent cosiness.
regards, the_leander
Yes AC, that's indeed what I meant - I tried to quote the relevant bit I was replying to and my quotes fell off.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Completely different platform, since AIX, AFAIK, does not run on the SPARC. But if AIX for x86 did not run on an Oracle x86 server running Solaris, that would be a problem.
Yeah, I've heard of hackintosh, but the fact remains that if you buy OS-X from Apple and install it on, say, a Dell, you're out of luck if you have any problems.
It's completely the same thing. If you can make AIX work on a Solaris box, go for it. But don't expect IBM or Oracle to help you. Just Because it's easier for Apple to support a Dell does not mean they have to. Dell can support Lenovo or HP machines if they wanted to do so. Why aren't you ranting how Windows OEMs won't support each other's machines?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"There's such a thing as "computing in general" wherein one can have a dominant market position? News to me"
Yep, it's called making the silicon most commonly used by people and software most used by people, which the two companies mentioned have (intel for silicon, Microsoft for Windows OS.)
"How is phone computing not part of "computing in general"
Ever see a featurephone? Bear in mind a large swath of phones don't really work as computing devices (nor do many run x86 hardware,) don't run Windows, and do not much more than make calls or take pictures. Plenty of flip phones still in use across the globe.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) would prevent ARM from licensing a CPU reference design to Apple if Apple was only going to allow IOS to run on it?
"There's such a thing as "computing in general" wherein one can have a dominant market position? News to me"
Yep, it's called making the silicon most commonly used by people and software most used by people, which the two companies mentioned have (intel for silicon, Microsoft for Windows OS.)
I.e., desktop/laptop computing. For tablet computing, it's various ARM vendors for silicon, and Apple and Google for the OSes. Unless Windows 8 tablets (as opposed to Windows RT tablets) catch on big, that's not going to go Intel/Microsoft.
"How is phone computing not part of "computing in general"
Ever see a featurephone? Bear in mind a large swath of phones don't really work as computing devices (nor do many run x86 hardware,) don't run Windows, and do not much more than make calls or take pictures. Plenty of flip phones still in use across the globe.
If they "don't really work as computing devices", then they're not part of "phone computing", so "phone computing" means "smartphones", and "phone computing" is like "tablet computing" in that it's ARM and iOS/Android.
How can you not see that it's totally the same thing. OH right, this is Slashdot and baseless Apple bashing is the norm.
For a comparable example, look at the Raspberry Pi. On one hand, it's a cheap SBC intended to run Linux. But the SoC itself has huge parts without public documentation, and anybody trying to write open drivers for it is going to have a huge challenge ahead. For now, it's "Broadcom's buggy .ko binaries, or nothing at all."
It's probably safe to say that someone will almost certainly find a way to run Linux on this chip. What they probably WON'T be able to do is take advantage of the chip's full capabilities, and Linux running on it will always be crippled or compromised in some way (at least, until long after nearly everyone has ceased to care about this specific chip).
I still love me some AMD processors. IMLTHO, they generally offer better bang for the buck than Intel. Posting this from an AMD box.
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
They'll sell the chips to anyone. If someone gets a reverse engineered driver running on the chips they would probably be secretly for it. (after all it would help them sell chips) They just aren't going to bother with official linux support because there's not possible way it could meet thier quality standard for support. PowerVR doesn't give a sh*t about updating old drivers to keep compatibility with no xorg and kernel versions. The IP is such that intel isn't allowed to do it on it's own, much less with an open source driver. Valley View will have great linux support, probably more so than any other intel processor release to date.
But of course may take 6-9 months to trickle into mainstream distros.
First of all if you even remotely looked at my posts, you would see I'm no fan of MS.
My impression is quite the opposite.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Geode line is dead, and their new low-power chips are crap even compared to Intel.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Huh? I'm talking about Apple - an OS vendor - not supporting machines that can run the OS, but where running the OS would void the warranty. Since when did Dell write OSs for their machines, and then say they won't support it on Lenovo? They last wrote something called Dell Unix something like in the early 90s. Which later became del Unix.
How is it the same thing? OS1 and OS2 run on CPU 1, which is used by PV1 and PV2. OS2 is made by PV2, who refuses to support those who run it on a CPU1 box made by PV1.
OTOH, OS3 runs on CPU3 and OS4 runs on CPU4. OS3 can't run on CPU4, and OS4 can't run on CPU3. PV3 makes OS3 and CPU3, and PV4 makes OS4 and CPU4. Ergo, PV3 cant support OS4, and PV4 can't support OS3.
So it's not like a customer can run AIX on a Sparc. But a customer can run OS X on a Dell. Just that it violates the terms of agreement if he does that.
Then you don't read very well. I've been called a Linux shill, an Apple apologist. But MS shill is something that I've never been accused of.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Intel won't support Linux on one of their new architectures? And, what makes this different than their position in the past?
After all, the reason that the x86_64 architectures are generally referred to as "amd64" in the linux community is because AMD came to the linux/open-source communities and said, "Here! This is what we got. Take a look and tell us what you think." where Intel, when questioned about the specs on their 64-bit architectures, said "We can't tell you that... that's proprietary information."
To the best of my knowledge, Intel has never been much support to the linux community, traditionally. It still hasn't stopped us from developing code that supports their architectures... It just takes longer as you have to pick apart the specs from the outside. So, the first few that decide to load linux on a Clover Trail system will have some extra work to do, but I don't think this is any more of a show-stopper than it has been in the past.
"Power to the Penguin!"
"We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem."