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Linus Torvalds on Why ARM Won't Win the Server Space (realworldtech.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the man-speaks dept.

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.

9 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Exactly why RedHat is losing to Ubuntu by AleRunner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I always found it strange to use an Ubuntu server. Whilst it's okay, and often better than most BSD or other systems, it's not as stable as RedHat. So why so many Ubuntu servers? It's simple: that's what the developers are using. Linus is, as occasionally happens, spot on with this one. If you can't get exactly the same set up locally there's always going to be the odd really difficult debugging case that just takes you too much time to justify. The solution is obvious: start providing ARM Linux laptops with very similar processors to the ones used in servers. I'll buy a few myself.

    1. Re:Exactly why RedHat is losing to Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People are using raspberry pi's, as they become more and more capable, that could be the thin end of the wedge, so to speak.

    2. Re: Exactly why RedHat is losing to Ubuntu by thereddaikon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have and continue to find Ubuntu in commercial products that is has no business being in though. I've seen full building security systems that would be best served by an embedded OS and web interface run on top of full Ubuntu, GNOME and all running on an ATX motherboard in a metal box bolted to the wall. The system is completely headless but it has a GUI. The only reason I can think of why is because Ubuntu is what the developers were familiar with.

    3. Re:Exactly why RedHat is losing to Ubuntu by thereddaikon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Maybe, but there have been attempts to bring ARM to cheap PCs before and its always been still born. The reasons are varied though. For example, the ARM windows tablets failed because they couldn't run 99.99% of windows applications and Microsoft only seemed half way interested in selling them to begin with. ARM Linux laptops could work fine. Most Userland code has an ARM port already anyways but mass production of PC's is expensive. What Dell can do, System 76 can't. They and others like Purism have dipped their toes into custom PC's that aren't just rebadged generic Chinese machines. But they still aren't bespoke. If they were then we would have 4:3 Linux laptops in production, because I know that the vast majority of Linux laptop users spend more time coding than watching movies. So if someone has the cash to get a production line up and running for laptops and desktops using ARM chips in purpose made motherboards that have standard RAM slots and expansion slots then I am sure people will buy them. And I think sooner or later that is exactly what will happen. The real question is, will ARM pull it off before RISCV catches up and does it first?

    4. Re: Exactly why RedHat is losing to Ubuntu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You obviously don't code. 4:3 monitors are better for coding - less scrolling - more on the screen. When wide screens first came into vogue a lot of us dev types found ourselves turning the wide screens 90 degrees to compensate for the lack of screen real-estate.

      Also, "the patriarchy" has nothing to do with ARM as a platform vs x86. Stop trying to force your SJW agenda into everything.

  2. Re:Same issue with POWER by thereddaikon · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I don't think IBM really ever cared all that much. AIM served to help offset the RnD costs somewhat. But I think IBM primarily made POWER for themselves. They wanted a modern architecture for the growing server market that would both be a decent basis to run VMs of legacy mainframe code on and also natively run modern code at the same time. They show no sign of giving up on the architecture over a decade after Apple dropped them and they sell multiple lines of servers using them. POWER doesn't really have to worry about running non native code or cross platform development because the only things POWER servers run is IBM code. The old model of not selling iron but selling a solution is very much in place today. They sell you the software, server and support all in one package. Unless you get an itemized bill you don't even know how much the systems cost. They also don't seem all that interested in the PC server space either.

    Motorola on the other hand seemed more willing and eager for PPC to catch on. It didn't work out but you did see some random machines adopt it for short periods. The BeBox, the half backed second chance at Amiga's, random accelerator cards for various obsolete machines etc. The best shot PPC ever had at getting wide adoption was during the short period Apple licensed Mac clones in the mid 90's. Jobs shut down when he returned. Regardless of whether that was the right move it did mean PPC would never be a serious contender to x86.

  3. Re:What differences can you actually notice? by Jaime2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You've never seen how half of the corporate stuff comes into existence. It starts as an amalgamation of whatever the most tech-savvy employee managed to piece together. They pieced it together on whatever they run on their desktop.

    I've seen 32-bit servers kept around to run something that has an ancient emailer program embedded in it that won't cooperate with 64-bit operating systems. It's not that there aren't any 64-bit email clients, it's that no one has the time to figure out how to replace an internal part of this ball-of-mud that runs the company.

    I've seen Windows XP in data centers because some ancient piece of software that runs the door locks hasn't been updated in twenty years and it has a driver that doesn't play well with anything newer.

    Slightly off topic, but similar, was the time when we had trouble buying a server because the software specs were written in 2001 and stated a minimum processor clock frequency of 3.2GHz, but the world had moved on to the Core architecture and clock speeds went way down (but performance went way up).

  4. Probably true for now, but.... by supremebob · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At some point in the near future, Macbooks will start coming with custom Apple designed ARM processors instead of Intel chips.

    At that point, the trendy urban hipsters buying these Macbooks will be developing on ARM and will want to deploy their code on ARM based servers. Your local IT department might say no, but I'm sure that the cloud hosting providers will gladly oblige.

  5. Pinebook Pro by darkain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm currently hoping the Pinebook Pro does very well when released later this year. I'm already planning on purchasing one for FreeBSD ARM development. The specs still are not the best, but are decent enough for some interesting development tasks. A portable ARM laptop with a hex-core processor, 4GB RAM, 64/128GB eMMC, Mini-PCIe with NVMe support, 1080p ISP display, 10,000 mha battery, and USB-C that supports charging + 4k/60hz video. This thing will be a little mini beast for $200. Most of programming is reading/writing code more so than executing it, so I believe this should be plenty powerful for solid web development and system service programming. This laptop NEEDS to do well to show the industry as a whole that these are the type of devices we WANT.