Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive

Agreed, fun to read. Spite driven development. Reminded me of that Asus ACPI issue that somebody went buckwild on last year, or when Tavis Ormandy decided that xterm on windows took too long to launch. https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive https://cmpxchg8b.com/slowterm.html

Credit goes to Mohamed Maatallah. Hopefully this is the right profile on GitHub: https://github.com/Zephkek Guessing based on this repo: https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive

that sounds like a firmware issue rather than a driver one, laptops are known to have horrible apic including on windows (ex: asus laptops). https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive

Honestly, it's because of what Sun's innovations in systems software that I look so fondly on their work. I do ask myself after reading the HN comment you linked, how often is the limiting factor of systems software the hardware? Potentially a case of this with consumer hardware is ACPI issues, like [1] and [2]. You could design the best software, but if your underlying firmware or hardware is faulty, then you would have to design your software around the faults instead of improving the lower layers or accept bugs. Oxide describes on their website issues with "vendors pointing fingers with no real accountability, even when teams need it most," and I have seen this point discussed online in regards to Oxide's work on designing their own hardware and firmware. Incidentally, I applied to Oxide recently; I think they're cool for the reasons I

There many laptops with top CPUs, top GPUs (for that weight) and top display panels. Which ones come consistently with excellent battery life/speakers/webcam/display/trackpad/keyboard and are quiet? As for cpu/gpu can you beat performance per watt? With a PC laptop I often see people optimise for something like a top cpu/gpu/ssd/memory specs but the keyboard (feel & layout)/trackpad/speakers/display/etc. are always variable and many times trash. The other issue is there's no consistent design team for each model, and a lot of the times you get a half-baked design which manifest into reliability issues. Then compound that with uncooperative vendors which gets their users to troubleshoot/diagnose/and fix their flaws (see [asus]). PC laptops just do not undergo the same amount of rigour in design, testing, and QA that Apple does with their m

This is related to a technical deep dive released a few weeks ago: https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive?tab=readme... HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45271484

I think as jeffbee said below it's not even the custom ARM cores, but rather Apple's ability to control not only the hardware but the software on-top of it. In a typical Windows machine you are dealing with your CPU and microcode made by AMD/Intel/Other, then the BIOS/Driver code written by your motherboard manufacturer, and your GPU from either the on-board, or dGPU from Intel/Nvidia/AMD and then Windows made by Microsoft. All of this leads to silly things like the ASUS ACPI driver bug [1] or Dell [2]. Apple does not suffer from this lack of control and communication, instead allowing tight integration. [1]: https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive [2]: https://triangulatedexistence.mataroa.blog/blog/i-uncovered-...

See recently: https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive I get the impression that, in hardware companies, software is often not taken very seriously, when it can cripple the user experience for trivial bugs. It's also annoying that it's "proprietary" rather than open source, when hundreds of models will be using the same chipset in the same way. It's not a competitive advantage, the sleep code, it can only be a disadvantage if it's done badly.