Comment by GeekyBear
2 days ago
When the vast majority of the devices you sell run on battery power, it makes far more sense from a battery life perspective to handle issues in hardware as much as possible.
For instance, try to find a processor aimed at mobile devices that doesn't handle video decoding in dedicated hardware instead of running it on a CPU core.
> […] handle issues in hardware as much as possible.
1. There is hardware support for (e.g.) SHA in ARM:
* https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0514/g/introducti...
But given Apple designs their own CPUs they could add extensions for anything they need. Or use a simpler algorithm, like Fletcher (which ZFS uses):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher%27s_checksum
2. It does not have to be enabled by default for every device. The main problem is the lack of it even as an option.
I wouldn't necessarily use ZFS checksums on a laptop, but ZFS has them for when I use it on a not-laptop.
> given Apple designs their own CPUs they could add extensions for anything they need.
Indeed. They added an entire enterprise grade SSD controller.
> In its patents there are mentions of periodically refreshing cells whose voltages may have drifted, exploiting some of the behaviors of adjacent cells and generally trying to deal with the things that happen to NAND once it's been worn considerably.
Good point.