>For reasons unknown, Apple is looking to hire Linux kernel developers in both Texas and California. >Apple has placed some job ads in March looking for experienced Linux kernel engineers. After a reader tipped us off, I was thinking maybe it was just a botched job ad by an ignorant recruiter, some April Fool's related prank, etc, but sure enough it pans out and there are multiple job listings for Apple looking out for Linux kernel developers. >In Austin they are looking for a Silicon Validation Engineer - Linux Driver and Kernel Developer. They would like someone with 5+ years of embedded Linux kernel development experience, understanding of Linux kernel internals, familiarity with ARM, and device driver development. >They are also hiring in Cupertino, CA for a Linux software engineer with a focus on embedded/SoCs. There is also a similar active job ad for Apple in Santa Clara also looking for a Linux kernel developer. >Quite surprising, but we'll see if anything notable comes of this... At first I was thinking maybe it was in relation to Apple's oversight with the CUPS print server or LLVM compiler, but these job descriptions are clearly focused on the embedded driver development angle.
No reason not to think their servers run on Linux, pretty much everything does.
Blake Clark
Yes. They're switching to linux. Heard it straight from my cousins brothers friend who works at apple.
Joseph Jones
They're switching to ARM for real this time. If they release their ARM machines with full OS X capabilities then I'm fucking sold. I just want a non-x86 mainstream platform. I'm fucking tired of having to use a 13 year old iBook and a patched together PowerMac G4 just to avoid x86.
Ian Wilson
everyone is switching to arm for real this time literally the only people who aren't are gamers
Sebastian Wilson
except desktop lmao owned
Evan Thompson
Question, can you tell me why you would go to such lengths only to avoid x86? I have no idea how ARM fares scaled up or what software I would use in a desktop ARM OS.
Liam Allen
Pretty sure it's the 'tism.
Lincoln Perry
I've been paranoid about x86 way since the ME thing was discovered. I've gotten to the point where I don't use a single x86 machine. My homeserver is an UltraSPARC-based Sun and most of my other machines are either Suns or ppc Macs. Also this, but quite literally. I'm a diagnosed assburger, so that might be the only reason behind this fear.
Austin Howard
Maybe it's just to reverse engineer superior Samsung technology
Camden Gray
My uncle receives hysteric visions from the ghost of Steve Jobs. Apple is going to merge macOS and iOS on aarch64 Linux by 2022.
Hunter Roberts
Makes sense, but then how would you trust the others ones? I just assume everything is spying on me try to minimize the entry points.
Hunter Gutierrez
They are too lazy to port osx kernel to arm, so they use linux when they start using their own chips in macbooks.
Dominic Robinson
>I just assume everything is spying on me and then try to minimize the entry points. Whoops.
Justin Sanchez
Help with ARM shit.
They aren't using BSD, they use XNU, and no they won't be ditching it.
You realize they have been using it on ARM for 10 years already? iOS uses the same kernel. They are going to ARM with their desktop OS and need developers to achieve that.
Jason Ortiz
lol youtube wannabe autist is autistic
Leo Cruz
He doesn't, he just want to be a snowflake and avoid x86 because it's mainstream.
Nathaniel Ward
>but then how would you trust the others ones? I can't trust them either, but at least using open ISAs and OpenFirmware/OpenBoot in conjunction with GNU/Linux gives me a (most likely false) sense of being in control of my machines. I'm also leaning a bit on security via obscurity, since I don't think anybody in their right minds would use these pieces of junk for their computing. And I'm pretty sure developing spying tools targeting a couple autists on the internet who can't even function properly, let alone cause an influence in society would be a huge waste of time and resources. Well at least you know who I am, I must be doing something right. I also have the time to spare on this crap, so pretty much.
Gabriel Foster
>Well at least you know who I am, I must be doing something right. shitposting on Jow Forums so much that people recognize you is not an accomplishment
Jack Garcia
I mention my youtube channel on less than 5% of my posts though.
Carson Foster
Apple is also planning on dumping Intel and developing their own CPU
Brandon Smith
Underrated
Brayden Morris
While the X86 ISA does suck and its a bitch to program in its not as big of a hindrance as one would expect.
The big reason why ARM is winning and will replace x86 in consumer electrons is two fold. The first and obvious advantage is that ARM cores where always designed to be power efficient which is a big factor why they took over the mobile market. Once an ARM core was good enough to browse facebook and twatter further computation power is simply overkill for 95% of consumers.
The second overlooked reason is that ARM does not fabricate parts. They sell their designs to other companies which can add other components to the chip. This allows vendors to offload the very challenging task of designing the core, memory controller, ect and focus on their specialized hardware needs.
When you buy X86 you basically have to use all of the Intel designed IO. You have to deal with 30 years of legacy designs intel wont let go for backwards compatibility (because you obviously need super IO support for eample) and other just really bad intel hardware designs. I kid you not I have worked with intel parts where they could not get a fucking UART, perfected in the 1970's, working on the first shot. For example, GPIO, perhaps the simplest of all IO, is a cluster fuck of epic proportions x86. Plus the North Bridge/South bridge, later PCH approach eats up more power. You're seeing more and more computers moving to being SoCs for this reason.
I am betting for these reason Apple will slowly switch everything to ARM. Apple probably doesn't want to get bogged down designing everything from scratch, so they'll buy an ARM core IP, add custom hardware they need and then fabricate the chips themselves. Raw computational power is where x86 shines and 98% of the Apple's customers do not need raw computational power.
All I got from this is that everyone just browses the web and does nothing else with the computer, but thanks for the mini infodump. Yes, ARM is power efficient, but what if you scale it up? Surely it won't be that easy to replace x86's speed. Current x86 emulation from previous generation SoCs is a joke and they really need to tackle this if they ever want to stand a chance with the huge legacy.
Angel Campbell
ARM cores are slowly catching up to Intel. The change is not going to happen over night, and Intel will still be around for decades.
>> Yes, ARM is power efficient, but what if you scale it up? Surely it won't be that easy to replace x86's speed
This actually is one of ARM other great strengths, you can scale ARM cores from 5 cent microcontrollers all the way up to enterprise grade server cores.
As a person who works in the embedded computing field, I observe x86 gradually be replaced. For applications that are already working under x86 where a drop in upgrade is required x86 is still holding out. For systems being designed from scratch x86 is slowly loosing ground to ARM. ARM is often is cheaper to get working as well.
>ARM cores are slowly catching up to Intel. The change is not going to happen over night, and Intel will still be around for decades. Sauce me up then. The last I heard of ARM winning in the longrun was in an AMD keynote or something along those lines before Zen when they were working on their implementation. They named them Opterons I believe.
