Help me understand this better.

From what I have read online, since arm just licenses their ISA and each vendor’s CPU design can differ vastly from one another unlike x86 which is standard and only between amd and Intel. So the Linux support is hit or miss for arm CPUs and is dependent on vendor.

How is RISC-V better at this?. Now since it is open source, there may not be even some standard ISA like arm-v8. Isn’t it even fragmented and harder to support all different type CPUs?

  • @[email protected]
    12•1 month ago

    There exists a chart showing how little the Linux kernel directly controls

    I’d be greatly interested in seeing this chart

      • @[email protected]
        4•1 month ago

        examples he gives are what you’d expect:

        • Linux doesnt control the bootloader
        • Linux doesn’t control power management

        Many systems on the chip that Linux doesn’t have control over, and could be compromised by a cross SoC attack

        • @[email protected]
          2•1 month ago

          Thank you for pulling the image out.

          This talk surprised me at the time. I was starting the eye opening experience of design hardware. Linux more orchestrates the hardware than controlling it.

          • @[email protected]
            2•1 month ago

            For me it opened my eyes to the idea that all you really need is some CPU time and a little RAM space to have a full-fledged performative system. Sure, there will be a large attack vector for remote spying, but if you just want to code and play games then it’s pretty amazing how little you need :-)