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0 pointschasil5y ago0 comments

As I understand it, ARM's new willingness to allow custom op-codes is dependent upon the customer preventing fragmentation of the ARM instruction set.

In theory, your software could run faster, or slower, depending upon Amazon's use of their extensions within their C library, or associated libraries in their software stack.

Maybe the wildest thing that I've heard is Fujitsu not implementing either 32-bit or Thumb on their new supercomputer. Is that a special case?

"But why doesn’t Apple document this and let us use these instructions directly? As mentioned earlier, this is something ARM Ltd. would like to avoid. If custom instructions are widely used it could fragment the ARM ecosystem."

https://medium.com/swlh/apples-m1-secret-coprocessor-6599492...

0 comments

stephencanon5y ago

> Maybe the wildest thing that I've heard is Fujitsu not implementing either 32-bit or Thumb on their new supercomputer. Is that a special case?

What's wild about this? Apple dropped support for 32b (arm and thumb) years ago with A11. Supporting it makes even less sense in an HPC design than it does in a phone CPU.

billiam5y ago

It's interesting that if you step back and look at what Amazon has been most willing to just blow up and destroy, it is the idea of intellectual property of any kind. It comes out clearly in their business practices. This muscle memory may make it hard for ARM to have a long term stable relationship with a company like ARM.

oblio5y ago

What do you mean?

Also, I think there's a typo in your last phrase.

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