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by viraptor 1386 days ago
One of the non-extreme solutions is publishing the doc for the extension + explicit usage grant on any related patents. They don't need to go full standardisation route before the first release. It would still be a proprietary extension under their control, but not a haha-screw-you proprietary.
2 comments
aseipp 1386 days ago
ARM literally doesn't allow public instruction set extensions by compliant license holders. Apple is presumably only allowed to do this precisely because they do not sell or otherwise offer their CPUs with any other software, with any other documentation, which hides this implementation detail entirely from all users, and I assume this allowance is worked directly into their specific ARM Architecture License.

Apple themselves designed probably half (or more) of the ARMv8 standard themselves. I assume they are pretty aware of what avenues are available to them in this case.

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samwillis 1386 days ago
Apple are religious about interoperability within their platform, making it easy and reliable. If they were to do as you suggested with some of their proprietary tech, there will be products that implement it badly. To the user they would have no idea who’s at fault, and would probably blame the tech in general, damaging Apple.

Standardisation, in combination with certification to use the “label”, ensures that people developing on top of their innovation do so well enough that it doesn’t damage the brand.

(Somewhat less relevant to an instruction set, and not something I particularly agree with)

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stephc_int13 1386 days ago
>interoperability within their platform

Isn't this called an oxymoron?

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samwillis 1386 days ago
Quite right, I should have said “ecosystem” really. And obviously this comment, about Apple in general, was a little off topic as a reply to the parent. I know what I was trying to get at, but didn’t convey it well in this context. Oh well.
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Jcowell 1386 days ago
No I’ve seen platforms where interoperability is non existent but it’s still a platform.
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viraptor 1386 days ago
This doesn't really make sense. There are already systems implementing connections to Apple stuff badly due to lack of documentation. The situation would only improve with the publication. For example we already have most of m1 hardware reverse engineered in Asahi - that's not going away. We've had things like air drop and earbuds charge state RE'd too. We'll get amx libraries as well soon.
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scarface74 1386 days ago
“Apple’s stuff” is there hardware + operating system.

The benefit of buying “Apple stuff” is the integration between their software and hardware ecosystem.

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viraptor 1386 days ago
Yes, and... That seems irrelevant to the point of my post?
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scarface74 1386 days ago
It’s relevant because

> For example we already have most of m1 hardware reverse engineered in Asahi - that's not going away. We've had things like air drop and earbuds charge state RE'd too. We'll get amx libraries as well soon.

You’re trying to use Apple hardware with non Apple software.

If you put Windows on an x86 Mac, do you expect the same experience (or battery life) that you get if you’re running MacOS on an x86 Max?

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