[HN Gopher] Introduction to Apple Silicon ___________________________________________________________________ Introduction to Apple Silicon Author : arkj Score : 119 points Date : 2022-08-01 19:53 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (github.com) (TXT) w3m dump (github.com) | macintux wrote: | The overview document makes for an interesting read. Definitely | worth referencing next time someone on HN or elsewhere claims | Apple's trying to lock down their computers to running macOS | only. | | https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Introduction-to-Appl... | dang wrote: | Discussed (a bit) here: | | _AsahiLinux 's Introduction to Apple Silicon_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699794 - March 2022 (5 | comments) | | Edit: I think it makes sense for us to change the URL from | https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Apple-Silicon-Subsys... | to this. | | Lists of other pages tend not to make good HN submissions--as | HN itself is already a list of pages, it's too much | indirection. It's better to submit the most interesting element | of the list. If there's a more interesting page than the | overview one, we can change the above URL again. | Teknoman117 wrote: | There is a huge difference between not physically locking | people out of running custom software and legitimately being | able to claim you support other operating systems. Requiring | that a community exist that is willing to spend many years of | collective time reverse engineering your products when you | could have just released documentation is still a massive | middle finger to everyone. | | The problem with these 100% vertically integrated stacks is | that every hardware release could be completely different and | it'll take years to catch up with just that release. In the | intervening time more hardware generations were released - It's | been 18 months since the M1 release. Asahi doesn't have 3D | acceleration, video encode/decode acceleration, or support for | many of the things that make Apple Silicon any good (i.e. the | fixed function / low power consumption hardware for the | majority of user tasks). At this rate it's going to be years | before it's "done" and we already have a successor generation | of hardware. | | I'll leave you with a quote from the Asahi docs | | > Development for an undocumented platform is a treadmill of | work. Every new feature requires reverse engineering the | relevant hardware, writing drivers, testing those drivers, then | getting them upstreamed. Even after a driver is upstreamed, | maintenance and optimisation is sometimes required, for example | if Apple introduce a breaking change to any firmware we are | required to interface with. For developers the work is never | really done | | It's the same reason we don't have third-party images for most | Android phones that are anything beyond tweaks of existing | Android images. | iseanstevens wrote: | It's been 18 months on an entirely new platform and a small | team of (BRILLIANT) people did such a good job discovering | and porting to undocumented hardware that it worked on the M2 | hardware essentially before it started shipping. | | I don't think Apple is trying to get in their way. | | Also... developing for documented hardware is also an endless | treadmill of work as it evolves/new products are released. | | It just has much less uncertainty. | | I 100% agree it would be awesome if Apple released full | documentation. Broadcom too. Probably others. | | (All IMHO) | Teknoman117 wrote: | > small team of (BRILLIANT) people | | I wasn't trying to take anything away from them at all. | It's astounding what they're accomplishing but the fact | that it's necessary for this situation to exist at all is | what I'm mainly commenting about. | whoisburbansky wrote: | Ah, does not releasing full documentation not count as | Apple "trying to get in their way"? Not trying to be | snarky, genuinely trying to figure out how folks draw the | line, since in my head, keeping documentation private | smells like obstructionism. | soneil wrote: | If it's obstructionism it's passively so. They've done | nothing to actively obstruct. They've also done nothing | to help. When they say they don't support it they're not | kidding, they don't just mean capital-S support. | | If I had to put as label on their stance, it'd be | "chaotic neutral". | iasay wrote: | It's difficult to have an opinion here as I've seen both | sides. While compatibility is nice, if you start kicking out | reference hardware documentation you instantly open up | several additional cans of worms from upstream IP licensing | to crappy clone repair parts appearing on the market. | | But realistically with Apple you don't know what's going to | happen. They could be silent forever. They could suddenly | dump a whole pack of documentation out tomorrow. An official | position would be nice. | | Switching it round though, 99.99% of customers are buying a | toaster. I put bread in. It makes toast. I eat toast. Does it | make commercial sense to support the 0.01% use case? That's | their equivalent model of supporting the iPhone 5's market | share for example. | 2muchcoffeeman wrote: | Does Apple have less reason to lock things down now? Being | fully vertically integrated, with possibly the best mobile | hardware in town, do they care that people will buy their | hardware just to run Linux? | | Help is good. But getting out of the way sounds like a good | consolation prize. | reaperducer wrote: | Important bit: | | _Apple gives users explicit permission to run their own OS in | their EULA._ | jaimex2 wrote: | Its not like it would matter if they didn't. It's your | hardware. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | Tell that to Nintendo. | BolexNOLA wrote: | It's baffling how outright hostile Nintendo sometimes can | be to its most devoted fans. And it's not even new - | they've gotten away with it since the moment they stepped | into video games. | est31 wrote: | On a technical level, you can't install third party OSs | without accepting the EULA first. Whether such acceptance | has legal meaning, I don't know, and it probably depends on | jurisdiction. | sgjohnson wrote: | > On a technical level, you can't install third party OSs | without accepting the EULA first. | | You absolutely can (no EULA when booting into recovery | partition), and I'm also fairly sure that acceptance | would be legally void, as it only applies to the | software. The hardware you own, it's not licensed to you. | | And thanks to the first sale doctrine, there's nothing | stopping someone from starting to sell M1/M2 MacBooks | running Asahi commercially. | owow123 wrote: | "On a technical level..." | | Sorry, what? Does buying a device from Apple | contractually oblige me to turn on the phone and agree to | the EULA on "first run"? What about second hand markets? | | What if I was smart / tooled up enough to replace the | Iphone flash storage with my own OS (without running | "first run")? | | At what "technical level" would what your saying make any | sense? Because it seems far more like a "contractual | condition of purchase" (I appear to have made that term | up) issue vs a "technical" issue to me. | userbinator wrote: | Indeed, the fact that it even has to do so is the important | bit, and reflects the attitude of such companies (and to a | certain extent, the government) today. | amelius wrote: | Yeah but they don't provide the documentation to reliably run | said OS, so good luck with that. | gzer0 wrote: | How does one even begin to start learning about this subject? | This is quite fascinating, I've always wanted to learn about | OSes, the underlying mechanisms... all of that. The sheer depth | of knowledge and technical-know how is truly incredible. I find | it hard to even begin, there's so many resources out there. | marcodiego wrote: | How does it compare in terms of "philosophical freedom" compared | to intel IME? Does it need many binary blobs? | Jtsummers wrote: | > This puts them somewhere between x86 PCs and a libre-first | system like the Talos II in terms of freedom to replace | firmware and boot components; while a number of blobs are | required in order to boot the system, none of those have the | ability to take over the OS or compromise it post-boot (unlike, | say, Intel ME and AMD PSP on recent systems, or the DMA-capable | chips on the LPC bus running opaque blobs that exist on even | old ThinkPads). | | https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Introduction-to-Appl... | - list of firmware blobs | als0 wrote: | Compared to the iME, not much, since at least the secure | enclave subsystem won't run any non-Apple code. The scary | difference about the iME is that it is directly connected to | the network. | vetinari wrote: | Intel ME is _not_ connected to the network. Intel AMT (vPro) | is. You have to pay extra to get it, and there are extra | conditions to be fulfilled (LAN or Wifi must be Intel). | | The difference wrt. Apple Silicon is, that AS firmware blobs | run on separate chips and 1) cannot access the main memory | freely; they are gated behind IOMMU and 2) there's no SMM | equivalent for any of them, so the main CPU time cannot be | stolen by firmware. | dapids wrote: | 100% this | duskwuff wrote: | Eh, I'd say the differences go deeper than that. Secure | Enclave doesn't appear to have any special access to other | resources on the system (like memory), it's initialized by | the operating system, not by pre-boot firmware, and the rest | of the system works perfectly fine if you leave the SEP | uninitialized. | peawee wrote: | Pretty well outlined here: | https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Introduction-to-Appl... | | > while a number of blobs are required in order to boot the | system, none of those have the ability to take over the OS or | compromise it post-boot (unlike, say, Intel ME and AMD PSP on | recent systems, or the DMA-capable chips on the LPC bus running | opaque blobs that exist on even old ThinkPads). | iasay wrote: | I wonder if anyone at Apple is working on this secretly. | tasty_freeze wrote: | I sure hope not, as it would compromise all the legitimate | reverse engineering being done on it. | uoaei wrote: | "Compromise"? "Legitimate"? | Daishiman wrote: | Coming in as an Apple skeptic, I'm fairly impressed in the | balance Apple has done between user security and device openness. | This definitely sounds like a well designed architecture. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-01 23:00 UTC)