Slashdot Mirror
Linus Torvalds on Why ARM Won't Win the Server Space (realworldtech.com)
Linus Torvalds: I can pretty much guarantee that as long as everybody does cross-development, the platform won't be all that stable. Or successful. Some people think that "the cloud" means that the instruction set doesn't matter. Develop at home, deploy in the cloud. That's bullshit. If you develop on x86, then you're going to want to deploy on x86, because you'll be able to run what you test "at home" (and by "at home" I don't mean literally in your home, but in your work environment). Which means that you'll happily pay a bit more for x86 cloud hosting, simply because it matches what you can test on your own local setup, and the errors you get will translate better. This is true even if what you mostly do is something ostensibly cross-platform like just run perl scripts or whatever. Simply because you'll want to have as similar an environment as possible.
Which in turn means that cloud providers will end up making more money from their x86 side, which means that they'll prioritize it, and any ARM offerings will be secondary and probably relegated to the mindless dregs (maybe front-end, maybe just static html, that kind of stuff). Guys, do you really not understand why x86 took over the server market? It wasn't just all price. It was literally this "develop at home" issue. Thousands of small companies ended up having random small internal workloads where it was easy to just get a random whitebox PC and run some silly small thing on it yourself. Then as the workload expanded, it became a "real server". And then once that thing expanded, suddenly it made a whole lot of sense to let somebody else manage the hardware and hosting, and the cloud took over. Do you really not understand? This isn't rocket science. This isn't some made up story. This is literally what happened, and what killed all the RISC vendors, and made x86 be the undisputed king of the hill of servers, to the point where everybody else is just a rounding error. Something that sounded entirely fictional a couple of decades ago. Without a development platform, ARM in the server space is never going to make it. Trying to sell a 64-bit "hyperscaling" model is idiotic, when you don't have customers and you don't have workloads because you never sold the small cheap box that got the whole market started in the first place.
Which in turn means that cloud providers will end up making more money from their x86 side, which means that they'll prioritize it, and any ARM offerings will be secondary and probably relegated to the mindless dregs (maybe front-end, maybe just static html, that kind of stuff). Guys, do you really not understand why x86 took over the server market? It wasn't just all price. It was literally this "develop at home" issue. Thousands of small companies ended up having random small internal workloads where it was easy to just get a random whitebox PC and run some silly small thing on it yourself. Then as the workload expanded, it became a "real server". And then once that thing expanded, suddenly it made a whole lot of sense to let somebody else manage the hardware and hosting, and the cloud took over. Do you really not understand? This isn't rocket science. This isn't some made up story. This is literally what happened, and what killed all the RISC vendors, and made x86 be the undisputed king of the hill of servers, to the point where everybody else is just a rounding error. Something that sounded entirely fictional a couple of decades ago. Without a development platform, ARM in the server space is never going to make it. Trying to sell a 64-bit "hyperscaling" model is idiotic, when you don't have customers and you don't have workloads because you never sold the small cheap box that got the whole market started in the first place.
Well, that's not a new problem. Back 'in the day' we had Windows Server trying to be secure, reliable, and usable. SQL Server tying to be 'enterprise' grade. Before that, I actually sold NetWare servers running Advantage db, PostgreSQL, with fabulous uptime and perfiomance, security, and were manageable. And before that, LANtastic. Ugh.
And seeing sensitive apps running on what is really general-purpose platforms is painful. For a little while I did break/fix support for a blood bank business. running on a custom RTOS that needed FDA and other approvals. Merely recovering from a failed hard drive required recertification. They were serious.
Yeah, leaving the GUI running in production is bad form. Once the system is debugged and production ready, tear out all the unnecessary stuff. But that's hard work, the same sort of work that Windows programmers needed to do, and did not, to permit their apps to install cleanly as Power User, and not as Administrator. Yeah, I bet these all woke Linux apps need root for a variety of lesser tasks, bad form again. I wonder how many don't even bother to do minimal port hardening. And this is a common problem. Windows Server is just as hard to secure from those common service exploits. Then you ad in Windows vulnerabilities and nothing important should run on Windows without substantial external security.
But this is really a screed about the sad state of software quality. It's ubiquitous. I'll just go back in the corner and watch the next sprint peter out, unfulfilled.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
2018 RHAT revenue was $2.9 billion. Canonical last year had revenues of $125.97 million. That's a 20x multiple.
The market share follows a similar trend.
The market share does not follow a similar trend, not even if you restrict yourself to the server space, and RH barely even registers in the desktop space.
Red Hat has focused on an easier-to-monetize market segment, that's all.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.