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Comment by axaxs | Hacker News Reader

Have you the counts of systems using ARM on Linux(Android) vs ARM in everything else? It's not even close.

You're underestimating the number of ARM microcontrollers in deeply embedded devices. For example, most hard disks and SSDs have at least one ARM core -- and often several -- running the device. They're also quite common in peripherals, like keyboards and mice. The firmware for these devices is often either a realtime embedded OS (like FreeRTOS), or is entirely bespoke. It's virtually never open-source.

Even if you're only looking at mobile phones, the cellular baseband is often implemented on ARM as well, and it definitely isn't a Linux system either. (Nor is it open source.)

Last I heard was hard disks and SSD manufacturers were moving away from ARM to RISC-V to save money on ARM license payments.

Source

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=swerv

Indeed. https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/record-numbers-arm-b...: “Arm silicon partners shipped a record 6.4 billion Arm-based chips in the fourth quarter of 2019”

Compare that with https://www.slashgear.com/the-2019-global-smartphone-sales-t..., which says about 1,5 billion smartphones were sold in the four quarters of 2019.

Also, Android, I think, by now is an edge case of open source. The kernel is, but there’s a thick proprietary layer on top of it without which it wouldn’t be Android.

I'll just reply once here. Thanks for the source. Keep in mind each cell phone can/does have multiple ARM chips, which I attribute still to 'Linux', maybe that's not fair.

I tried to get real stats and didn't get far. The most I could find was that ARM was actually declining somewhat in embedded, and that embedded was less than half of revenues. Also, that ARM had 90 percent of the 'phone/tablet/laptop' market, but nothing amounting to close to a majority anywhere else.

I think I was incorrect saying that it isn't close, it likely is. I still think more go to supporting a Linux device than not, but am happy to be proven wrong if such data exists.

I don’t have those numbers, but would guess that, the smaller the ARM CPU, the more of them are sold.

Also, the more are sold, the more hardware costs become important relatively to development costs, making Linux a poorer choice than smaller OSes or even bare metal.

(And the smallest really are small. https://developer.arm.com/ip-products/processors/cortex-m/co... tells me you can get a 0.0066 mm² 32-bit CPU. That one doesn’t have a MMU)

Heck, every AMD processor has an ARM core on it to run some firmware. So even if you're running x86, you may also be running ARM.

You seem ignorant of exactly how many embedded systems out there are not running linux but smaller OS or just bare metal custom kernels. You should research it. Looks like someone down below is less lazy than me and gave some source so do some reading. ARM cores are everywhere buried deep, where you can't see, waiting for skynet to come along

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