Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:07:33 +0100 | Subject | Re: ARM promising platform, needs to learn from PC. | From | Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <> |
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this one's again a very good statement of the problem, with hints in it that say what the solution is ["accept common open standards"].
short version: punish selfishness [back of the patch queue i.e. never], and reward cooperation [front of the patch queue].
only you can lay down the law on this one, linus. nobody else.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2386322&cid=37133042
"Actually it is the other way around. The x86 platform is mostly based on open standards. There are more 486-compatible clones than you may realise. ARM, on the other hand, is strongly proprietary. There are no clones at all. The ARM fragmentation has occurred because of a lack of open standards - while the PC guys were standardising PCI, USB and VGA, every ARM licensee was reinventing the wheel to give their own SoC the features that nobody else had. While the core ISA is always the same, the system architecture is not.
When ARM CPUs were only used for embedded systems, this was fine, because each vendor could provide a BSP for each supported OS. Now that ARM CPUs are being used in general-purpose computers like Windows Phone 7 and Android handsets, the fragmentation has become an issue preventing users from loading alternative firmware. Clearly, this is a concern for Linus Torvalds (and Linux supporters who understand the issue) as it causes pain for kernel development and makes it essentially impossible to produce a single OS that could be installed (say) on any ARM-based smartphone."
or a tablet. or a laptop. or a netbook. or a smartbook. or a [dumb]phone. or a GSM module. or a 3G module. or a Marvell WIFI module. or a real-time Engine Control Unit. or an industrial embedded controller.
someone else pointed out that you *can't* have "common hardware design" right across the board... but you can at least have "common hardware designs" across areas that are... well... common! hardware ODMs could group together based around tablets. the situation where there is one design of 7in tablet motherboard per OEM per CPU, one design of 10in tablet motherboard per OEM per CPU, is bloody ridiculous!
anyway. enough. i've made the point. i look forward to hearing from you on this, linus. even if it's "hmmm..." or "go away you insane babbling idiot!".
btw - anyone else got any good ideas?
l.
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