Facebook Joins Linaro Linux-on-ARM Effort 60
dgharmon writes "It has been more than two years since Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments formed a non-profit software company called Linaro to help focus the disparate efforts to get Linux running well on ARM processors and system-on-chip designs. A slew of companies, some new to the ARM racket, have joined the Linaro effort – and as of Thursday afternoon, so has social media juggernaut Facebook."
Makes sense. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Makes sense. (Score:4, Informative)
FTFA: "Facebook and AMD are joining the Linaro Enterprise Group, which was formed to focus on "the development of foundational software for ARM server Linux," as the announcement put it."
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ARM/Linux on smartphone? Genius! Quick, call Google and Samsung and tell them about your amazing new discovery.
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But there are so many working distributions out there right now, why start from scratch with a new one. For example there are about three linux based distros for the openmoko, all with custom UI front ends.
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There are about three linux based distros for the openmoko, all with custom UI front ends.
Most "distros" that you see are exactly that; ways of experimenting with different UI, usability and system administration concepts. The guys that do them don't want to do much of the low level plumbing. Think of Linaro as being similar to Mer [wikipedia.org] which is the underlying developer whilst Plasma Active [wikipedia.org] and Nemo [merproject.org] the consumer distros built on top of it.
In the case of Linaro, though, they are trying to support completely embedded customers. These users often don't end using a proper distro at all. For this re
Linaro is not *a distribution* (Score:2)
Linaro is not a distribution. It's a joint effort to *help linux run on ARM hardware*.
For example there are about three linux based distros for the openmoko, all with custom UI front ends.
And for these "linux based distros" to work you need a running linux (kernel) on which to base them. That's the work of the software company named Linaro.
To give into more details:
as a point of comparison, in the x86 processor world, things are rather standardized, and well modularized. There's more or less only one single main platform (the PC) with some weirder variant (BIOS vs. (U)EFI, or even weirder PC vs. custom Appl
Um... (Score:2, Redundant)
I'm posting from a Linux on ARM device right now.
Re:Um... (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, that's not what Linaro is about. They are looking forward to stop the explosion of code and architecture within the ARM familly. No two ARM machine boots the same. No two ARM processors expose component the same way. You did not read Linus saying "what about stoping the ARM crap?"
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/08/18/1728227/arm-is-a-promising-platform-but-needs-to-learn-from-the-pc [slashdot.org]
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Of course, that's not what Linaro is about. They are looking forward to stop the explosion of code and architecture within the ARM familly.
Agreed, it even says that in the summary, lol.
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Android runs ON Linux. end of story... Including all the utilities unix/linux provides. It is a Linux distribution that relies on Java for the desktop. SuSE, Slackware, and RedHat are based on Linux. They have different desktops based on different technologies.
They are all Linux.
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Android convergence vs. Linaro (Score:2)
The Android convergence was about bringing the specificities needed to run android userland back into the main kernel tree, instead of a special separate fork.
(e.g.: Among other, Android uses some special type of IPC)
Since recent kernel (was it 3.5? 3.6? memory fails me) these modifications are back into the main tree.
So, today, *as long as the hardware is supported*, you can run Android using any modern kernel. (for example: there are some interesting experiment of having both Ubuntu and Android running on
Zoos are Expensive (Score:1)
Of course, that's not what Linaro is about. They are looking forward to stop the explosion of code and architecture within the ARM familly. No two ARM machine boots the same. No two ARM processors expose component the same way. You did not read Linus saying "what about stoping the ARM crap?"
Soon they will have to address this problem, not so much as to allow Linux to spread, but because it drives the cost of ARM based devices for the companies that make money writing the operating systems for them, such as Microsoft. It is a competitive disadvantage for ARM to be in charge of a zoo.
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Re:Stealing Credit (Score:4, Informative)
According to the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org], these guys are simply trying to simplify, optimize, and reduce fragmentation in the ARM/Linux world. They're not trying to claim anything except that their tools and validation suite make your life easier.
It's sort of like the Linux Standard Base, if you remember that initiative. The LSB was invented to address concerns of fragmentation and difficulty in porting applications to Linux, because the distributions were so radically different from each other. While it didn't work out as well as hoped, it did manage to reduce the idiosyncrasies.
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For that matter Linaro has been making ARM patchsets for various hardware for over 10 years (maybe even longer!). Probably 3/4 of the ARM Linux hardware you'll find (be it routers, IPCams, print servers, etc) will be running some kernel with a -linaro in it, and even the ones that aren't usually have a -linaro in the gcc/binutils buildversion.
They're just trying to reduce their own costs by consolidating the majority of necessary changes into patchsets that will be accepted into the kernel, so that minimal
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For that matter Linaro has been making ARM patchsets for various hardware for over 10 years (maybe even longer!).
Citation needed. According to wikipedia, Linaro was only founded 2 years ago.
Promote (Score:1)
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Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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The very reason it's a clusterfuck is because of the fragmentation these guys are trying to address. Each device has a different kernel, even those that use the same SoC (because the GPIOs, etc. are hardcoded). That means that the developers efforts are fragmented - only a small number of people see the bugs and put in the effort to fix them, which undermines Linus' law. 3.7 [phoronix.com] will help, but there's still a lot to be done before ARM has the kind of compatibility that x86 does.
tldr: These guys are doing useful
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I'm sorry to hear your Pandaboard is a clusterfuck, but the Raspberry Pi is pretty stable now so long as you don't try to use turbo mode so clearly it's not impossible to get something working.
Personally I only know linaro exists because someone compiled an advanced kernel for the Nook Simple Touch with it, and it's supposed to have improved performance considerably. I can't speak to that, because this kernel also provides a lot of other things including overclocking, and I didn't even try to make a direct
ARM servers (Score:3)
Not About Mobile (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if Facebook is planning a smartphone (huh?) they don't have a lot of motivation to improve core Linux on ARM. I think it more likely that they're seriously looking at transitioning their (huge) data centers to ARM in order to save energy costs.
I've poo-pooed ARM-server speculation in the past, but this goes way beyond speculation.
While you are at it (Score:1)
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Ah...I still have fond memories of my C=128
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no, it has no MMU
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there are the ARM patches to 2.6.14 t o 2.6.19 work on an MPU (Memory Protection Unit rather than MMU) of certain ARM systems
so, you need something to manage memory
and ucLinux is not Linux
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no, it has no MMU
Actually, that's not the big problem. I think that the MMUless code was merged back into the mainline at some point. Either way there's still ucLinux.
The more fundemental problem is that the stack pointer can't be moved, which makes preemptive multitasking painful.
But it has been done, and it's called lunix.
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ucLinux is not Linux
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also, the ARM patches to a few of the 2.6 kernels that use the MPU of certain ARM systems still is relying on a memory management/protection hardware
no memory management/protection, no full Linux
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Emulate an x86 or supported ARM on a 6502. Of course, performance would likely be seconds (or minutes) per FLOP. Aside from the slow instruction cycle rate of the fastest made 6502, all your "emulated" RAM would have to be on disk.
Downsides to running ARM servers? (Score:2)
I understand the upsides of ARM servers, namely lower cost hardware and much better energy efficiency. However, what are the downsides? I've heard mixed stories about whether or not we can achieve the same performance from ARM as we can from x64, but nothing concrete.
If there are no significant shortcomings, I'd wager that Intel's days are numbered. A lot of AMD's revenues come from server deployments, and they've already jumped on board with ARM, but Intel shows no interest in doing so. You'd figure that *
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Server chips make less than 12% of AMDs revenue, tieing with chipsets, of all thing. Graphic chips are more than twice that.
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It really depends on the load.
I don't see them taking over totally anytime soon but for some tasks they will be good enough.
sql back end of any kind forget about it, not even worth discussing anytime some.
They could need hardware accelerators to even be really useful on anything but the lightest loads.
Even middle-ware processing, not soon.
This is an area where accelerators could shine.
Front end web servers, This is the place they will show up and shine.
A lot of power is wasted waiting to serve a heavy load
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It remains to be seen if ARM will ever offer the same single-thread performance as x86, but it offers better performance per watt now, so embarrassingly parallelizable tasks are already better done on ARM so long as the servers don't cost so much that you don't save any money using less power. Power is pretty expensive these days though, which is one big reason you're seeing so much interest in ARM servers, and intel isn't exactly known for offering their chips at unbelievably low prices.