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Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2021 11:07:10 -0700
From: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
To: Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com>
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Subject: Re: [TUHS] ATC/OSDI'21 joint keynote: It's Time for Operating
 Systems to Rediscover Hardware (Timothy Roscoe)
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On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 10:51:38AM -0700, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> So my question on many of these processors is, has anybody
> given any thought to system architecture?  Most likely all
> of us have had to suffer with some piece of spiffy hardware
> that was pretty much unprogrammable.  Do the performance
> numbers mean anything if they can't be achieved in an actual
> system configuration?

Apple, much to my surprise, has been thinking about this stuff.
The M1 is one of the better thought out chips in a long time.
I especially liked the idea of slow (and low battery draw)
processors for some apps, and fast ones for apps that need
fast.  It's an obvious idea in retrospect but I hadn't thought
to do it that way.  Clever.