Google developing own CPUs for Chromebook laptops

Re:Google developing own CPUs for Chromebook laptops by Zenst on Saturday October 02, 2021 @04:28PM (#28731809)

> Many people are seeing all these different vendor specific CPUs as a win. I'm a bit more skeptical, but perhaps that it unwarranted.

Mixed upon that.

Upside - getting software made more portable across architectures and with that, the choice of an ARM or X86 desktop also makes porting to other cpu types less of an effort. Then drivers and lets cut to the crux - support for other hardware via drivers is what holds any other architecture back from the start.

Downside - Moving towards more and more closed/secret source CPU's that more locked in and if they become the norm, then a whole level of developing becomes way harder.

Whilst I'm sure many more upsides and a few other downsides, the real upside in all this will be even better ARM support by the commercial apps. With that, I really do think Apple with the M1 done wonders for ARM and the whole ARM environment.

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Re:Google developing own CPUs for Chromebook laptops by my123 on Saturday October 02, 2021 @05:04PM (#28732067)

The extensions present in the M1 are not used at all by Apple’s public compilers. From the perspective of a 3rd-party macOS developer that doesn’t reverse engineer, it’s just a regular arm64 machine.

This allows Apple to deprecate/change those extensions over time without developer involvement, and even use Cortex reference designs where it would make sense for them.

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Re:Google developing own CPUs for Chromebook laptops by Zenst on Saturday October 02, 2021 @05:36PM (#28732301)

Very true and easy to blur the lines of thought between SOC and CPU these days upon ARM. Thank you for the poignant reminder.

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