cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/18817227
What the fuck??? Insert Jumanji meme “What year is it?”
Numbers check out too. Wintel, slayed, and we didn’t even notice.
The whole ring -3 / MINIX business a while back put a serious amount of FUD into the market and Intel has been on the wane ever since.
This is not necessarily unfounded FUD either. MINIX is literally there, lurking inside all modern Intel processors, waiting to be hacked by the enterprising ne’er-do-well. (NB: This is not to say that there aren’t ways to do similar things to AMD chips, only that MINIX is not present in them, and it’s theoretically a lot more difficult.)
Then bear in mind that MINIX was invented by Andrew Tanenbaum, someone Linus Torvalds has had disagreements with in the past (heck, Linux might not exist if not for MINIX and Linus’ dislike of the way Tanenbaum went about it), and so there’s an implicit bias against MINIX in the data-centre world, where Linux is far more present than it is on the desktop.
Thus, if you’re a hypothetical IT manager and you’re going to buy a processor for your data-centre server, you’re ever so slightly more likely to go for AMD.
Note that Linus’ disagreement was largely over design decisions and microkernel stuff. Linus actually respects Tanenbaum a great deal. Tanenbaum’s book on operating systems is a CS classic and is a direct influence on the young Linus.
Pretty sure my own education had a Tanenbaum book in amongst it, from which I learned a number of things. In another world, one where my brain isn’t its own worst enemy, I could well be one of those IT managers. There the FUD would have been the main factor in my decision. Probably. Because I’m not sure I’d be completely happy if it was a Linux buried in the chipset either. Especially one largely outside my control.
