Rust wgpu now has a
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@MaddieM4 @mcc @amarioguy that's very much the spirit in which we're offering our thoughts, we're not trying to say don't use RISC-V. we have a RISC-V machine ourselves that we intend to use to test our compiler when we get to that stage of things.
@ireneista @mcc @amarioguy That is also true. Navigation is complex. Without a north star it's impossible.
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@mcc yeah. I'm uh, aiming for CPU framebuffer rendering, for exactly those reasons
I mean. The affine textured low res low poly PS1 aesthetic is in right now? At least that's what I tell myself
@mcc anyway yeah you're right we do need a kernel. Something that goes "here's file system, video, sound, and input" and then from there things get a lot more manageable. At least for games
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@decay @ireneista @amarioguy @MaddieM4 i don't want to write for the DEC PDP series anymore, I've written enough C
@mcc @ireneista @amarioguy @MaddieM4 an extremely fair point
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@griotspeak Thinking only in a utilitarian way and not contemplating concepts such as joy:
If you're helpful high in the stack, but don't think you'd be helpful low in the stack, wouldn't it make more sense to stay high in the stack, where you're useful?
@mcc It would but I am genuinely not sure how possible that is when so many foundational pieces are being compromised
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@decay @ireneista @amarioguy @MaddieM4 i don't want to write for the DEC PDP series anymore, I've written enough C
@mcc @decay @ireneista @MaddieM4 part of me does sorta wish that rust wasn't so dependent and reliant on cargo and such...
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@decay @ireneista @amarioguy @MaddieM4 i don't want to write for the DEC PDP series anymore, I've written enough C
@mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 we're not suggesting eliminating the MMU, just, like, refactoring a bit so it isn't so many abstraction layers that subvert each other
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@mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 we're not suggesting eliminating the MMU, just, like, refactoring a bit so it isn't so many abstraction layers that subvert each other
@mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 we'd keep hyperthreading, too
we just don't think management engines have any place heh
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@mcc It would but I am genuinely not sure how possible that is when so many foundational pieces are being compromised
@griotspeak the thing about a high level is *by definition* you can transplant it onto a different low level, once that problem is solved
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@eniko redox is currently capable of handling one channel of mono sound output and i think no support for sound input whatsoever
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@mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 we'd keep hyperthreading, too
we just don't think management engines have any place heh
@mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 vector units are one of those "sigh .... yes" things, as well. frustrating complexity, but important, and at least it's self-contained.
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@amarioguy @mcc I mean I feel about modern GPUs and their intentionally prohibitive feature span the way I do about web standards: "that's a nice miracle you destroyed the ecosystem with. Undoing the damage is probably a multi-decade job and none of the normal folk will understand why feature reductions are needed. Won't stop me from patiently pushing in the right direction, though."
@MaddieM4 @amarioguy @mcc i would also consider that this is exactly how things start. a lot of open source pillars started as someone's cool project
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@mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 we'd keep hyperthreading, too
we just don't think management engines have any place heh
@ireneista @mcc @decay @MaddieM4 one thing i appreciate about Apple's SEP (despite yes, being from Apple and a closed, black-box so still not gonna say that anyone should just blindly trust it) is that the threat model they went for it was mutual distrust, where both the main CPU and the SEP core distrust each other, so both isolate their memory from each other
for context, both ME/PSP are modeled such that they own the platform entirely afaict, so if you get code exec in the ME or PSP, you own the whole platform, while in Apple's case, owning the SEP these days does not let you own the AP entirely, you still have to overcome most the other normal hurdles and can't just trivially DMA into host memory
that said, imo security processors including the SEP should not be unauditable black boxes at all, there's too much at stake for that to imo be a truly trustworthy system...
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@mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 vector units are one of those "sigh .... yes" things, as well. frustrating complexity, but important, and at least it's self-contained.
@ireneista @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 i suspect vector units are widely underutilized, and thus skippable, especially if you have access to a coprocessor that can run compute shaders. maybe as compilers have got better this (vector units are underutilized) has become less true.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/117338324202161763
@eniko thanks.
and yeah, we need a kernel. one person can't write a kernel. it's not a matter of scope. it's a matter of you have to test more hardware configurations than one person can get in a private residence. we need that kernel handled by an *institution*.
the problem with freedos is if we want to make *games* then probably at some point we want access to sound and video. and if you want your game to render by any method other than CPU-on-framebuffer sound and video become Very Hard.
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@ireneista @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 i suspect vector units are widely underutilized, and thus skippable, especially if you have access to a coprocessor that can run compute shaders. maybe as compilers have got better this (vector units are underutilized) has become less true.
@mcc @ireneista @decay @amarioguy
It has, and for a lot of software with hot loops that are meaningful to accelerate with SIMD, people have manually dictated the vector instructions as necessary. That is a particular feature where a lot of people would not willingly go back. I'd probably be one of those people tbh.
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@ireneista @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 i suspect vector units are widely underutilized, and thus skippable, especially if you have access to a coprocessor that can run compute shaders. maybe as compilers have got better this (vector units are underutilized) has become less true.
@mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 Fourier and wavelet transforms are really important though, even though most programs don't do them. but you raise a good point.
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@ireneista @mcc @decay @MaddieM4 one thing i appreciate about Apple's SEP (despite yes, being from Apple and a closed, black-box so still not gonna say that anyone should just blindly trust it) is that the threat model they went for it was mutual distrust, where both the main CPU and the SEP core distrust each other, so both isolate their memory from each other
for context, both ME/PSP are modeled such that they own the platform entirely afaict, so if you get code exec in the ME or PSP, you own the whole platform, while in Apple's case, owning the SEP these days does not let you own the AP entirely, you still have to overcome most the other normal hurdles and can't just trivially DMA into host memory
that said, imo security processors including the SEP should not be unauditable black boxes at all, there's too much at stake for that to imo be a truly trustworthy system...
@amarioguy @mcc @decay @MaddieM4 yes, we do appreciate that choice, it's a good choice
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@mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 we'd keep hyperthreading, too
we just don't think management engines have any place heh
@ireneista @mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4
FWIW I *would* keep most of modern CPUs, but strongly support on security grounds Apple’s decision to not have hyperthreading.
Spectre v4 is just far too unnerving.
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@mcc @decay @amarioguy @MaddieM4 Fourier and wavelet transforms are really important though, even though most programs don't do them. but you raise a good point.
@ireneista @mcc @decay @amarioguy That's a good particular example. A part of computing freedom that I think is pretty important is "being able to make music with computers, ideally in realtime." I have that on my list of vital user stories for my someday project microkernel OS. The arts are the kind of thing that make computers worth doing.
A lot of realtime music plugin stuff depends of Fourier transforms and SIMD in general.
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The fourth backend is this guy named Mutabah.
https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc
Now, looking, I now see that he may be using Claude. What I remember is the last time I looked at this was three or four months ago and there weren't Claude signals, but also at the time it had been dormant for a while. I don't know why people think that resurrecting a dead project by starting to use claude is better than leaving it dead, but they seem to think this.
