[HN Gopher] It's time for operating systems to rediscover hardware
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       It's time for operating systems to rediscover hardware
        
       Author : fanf2
       Score  : 25 points
       Date   : 2024-10-19 20:42 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.usenix.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.usenix.org)
        
       | johnea wrote:
       | OS's forgot about h/w?
        
         | schmidtleonard wrote:
         | Yeah, it got buried and forgotten beneath three layers of pig
         | lipstick and a candy crush ad.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | The problem is that vendors of hardware (read: nVidia) do not
       | want the OS to have full control over the hardware. So instead
       | they write a driver that the OS can talk to, and everything else
       | is kept behind closed doors.
       | 
       | Meanwhile, companies like Apple who integrate everything _can_
       | have full control, and are likely to come up with the better OSes
       | in the future, but they are even more closed and the only talks
       | we 'll see about them are keynote speeches by the CEO.
        
         | grisBeik wrote:
         | > The problem is that vendors of hardware [...] do not want the
         | OS to have full control over the hardware
         | 
         | I agree. At least the first half of the presentation blames the
         | sordid status quo on Linux, all the while it is actually the
         | responsibility of the hardware vendors. Linux not being the
         | boot loader, Linux not being the firmware, Linux not being the
         | secure firmware, etc etc etc is all the fault of the hardware
         | vendors. They keep everything closed; even on totally
         | mainstream architectures. On x86, whatever runs in SMM,
         | whatever initializes the RAM chips, etc is all highly guarded
         | intellectual property. On the handful select boards where
         | everything is open (Raptor Talos II?), or reverse engineered,
         | you get LinuxBoot, Coreboot, ... Whoever owns the lowest levels
         | of the architecture, dictates everything; for example where
         | Linux _may_ run.
         | 
         | > Meanwhile, companies like Apple who integrate everything can
         | have full control
         | 
         | Yes. Conway's law. As long as your SoC "congeals" from parts
         | from a bunch of vendors, your operating system (in the broad
         | sense the presenter uses the term in) is going to be a hodge-
         | podge too. At best, you will have formal interfaces /
         | specifications between components, _and_ open source code for
         | each component, but the whole will still lack an overarching
         | design.
         | 
         | Edited to add: systems are incredibly overcomplicated too;
         | they're _perverse_. To me, they 've lost all appeal. They're
         | unapproachable. I wish I had started my professional career
         | twenty years earlier, when C (leading up to C89) still closely
         | matched the hardware. (But I would have had to be born twenty
         | years earlier for that :/)
        
           | rjsw wrote:
           | Another area that could be open and cooperating in the
           | operating system is network controllers, most have an offload
           | engine of some kind but you can't extend what it does or fix
           | bugs in it.
        
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       (page generated 2024-10-19 23:00 UTC)