Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

This recent event has converted me to a full blown supporter:

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-2310

I lost days of time to what very much appears to be yet another hardware bug in Intel's latest core. If you don't believe me that it's a hardware bug, read the whole thing. It's probably a zero day security vulnerability too.

The only catch is: if Apple also takes the opportunity to iOS-ify Mac and lock it down to the point that it is no longer useful for professional work, I will have to drop the platform entirely. I've seen some decent AMD Ryzen laptops showing up on the market and I could use Linux with a Windows VM for the occasional Zoom call or similar thing.

Honestly though... I think if Apple pulls this off well without alienating their user base, it probably spells the end of the X64 architecture outside cloud and servers. Given that people prefer to deploy to the same architecture they develop on, it probably means X64 will eventually die in those areas too. AArch64 could end up being the core architecture of almost everything by the 2030s.

> use Linux with a Windows VM for the occasional Zoom call or similar thing

The other way around works pretty well these days. Windows 10 and their new terminal app plus WSL2 for development is a pretty good combo. Most things work as expceted, and if you use Visual Studio Code it has good integration between the two environments.

Except for bad font smoothing on Windows on standard DPI displays.

Subpixel antialiasing is disabled on newer OS X builds, so standard DPI displays look worse on OS X than windows now.

FWIW, Zoom runs reasonably well on Linux - as long as your webcam is supported.

For my use (occasionally joining someone's meeting), the Zoom web client completely eliminates the need to install the app. They don't make it easy to find, but:

https://zoom.us/wc/join/enter-your-meeting-id-here

Yep, when a computer manufacturer with 10% desktop market share switches processor architectures, surely that will dictate whether the architecture will die. <-- This is sarcasm, to be clear.

Strangely enough, Apple's architectural hardware choices have a history of having effects on the broader market disproportionately to their market share.

aarch64 is not only chosen by apple. There are so many linux arm64 sbc floating around. MS also has their own plan on arm platform

Apple ARM chips probably have similar issues. They are just not under the microscope yet like the Intel chips are.

Modern processors are crazy complicated.

Yes, I'm sure ARM will never ever have a hardware bug so you will be safe!

>appears to be yet another hardware bug in Intel's latest core.

Does this bug also appear on Linux or Windows?

Yes. It also hard crashes the host Mac when run inside a Linux VM in Parallels.

Read the above sentence again. It escapes VM isolation.

It also crashes the whole machine on a Microsoft Surface tablet with the same chip in it.

So three OSes, and it escapes VM isolation. It's a hardware bug.

Mitigation so far is to try to use exotic JVM options to make the JIT be less clever and not emit whatever the offending code is... but we don't know what it is, so it's shooting in the dark.

You sure it's not a bug with the VM? VMs often have bugs.

If it's a VM bug then why does it also happen on other OSes without running a VM?

The same bit of software:

* Crashes the OS when running native, where OS is Windows, Mac, and Linux.

* Crashes the host OS from inside a VM running Linux or Windows.

I can't think of any explanation other than a hardware bug. How can the same crash happening inside and outside a VM on multiple OSes be anything else?

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