About the Rosetta Translation Environment • Hacker News Board

Re: About the Rosetta Translation Environment

#21

Post by monocasa » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

tomduncalf wrote: post #6

Are the limitations on x86_64 virtualization likely to be for technical reasons, or patent reasons? I read a comment on here alluding to some patents on x86_64 virtualization expiring later this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612256 - could that mean that there is a chance this might happen and they are keeping it quiet for now, or are patents likely unrelated?

Those are two different concerns. Rosetta isn't emulating x86_64 kernel mode. Microsoft isn't emulating x86_64 at all.

I imagine Apple has enough patents that Intel infringes on to be able to cross licence.

Re: About the Rosetta Translation Environment

#22

Post by monocasa » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

leeter wrote: post #20

nickcw wrote: post #15

I thought this was the most interesting paragraph. > What Can't Be Translated? > Rosetta can translate most Intel-based apps, including apps that contain just-in-time (JIT) compilers. I guess translation of JIT compiled stuff implies this isn't a once of translation. I guess translating plugins implies that too. It sounds like very clever stuff to me! > However, Rosetta doesn’t translate the following executables: >…

RE AVX and above: My guess is that they are licensing the Transmeta IP which doesn't include those licenses IIRC. So unless they wanted to get sued they'd have to be careful. I suspect some SSE instructions may also not be supported as I don't recall if Transmeta had a license up to SSE4.

I doubt they're licencing Transmeta. Transmeta never had an x86_64 processor.

Re: About the Rosetta Translation Environment

#23

Post by monocasa » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

mrkstu wrote: post #16

marcinzm wrote: post #4

>However, Rosetta doesn’t translate the following executables: Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms How will this impact docker? Does this mean you can't run x86 docker containers on new Apple laptops?

They haven’t clarified if Docker is ARM all the way down or if they are using QEMU to emulate x86 somewhere on the stack.

They wouldn't need qemu anywhere either way; they have their own binary translator.

Re: About the Rosetta Translation Environment

#24

Post by beervirus » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

jayyhu wrote: post #17

>Rosetta translates all x86_64 instructions, but it doesn’t support the execution of some newer instruction sets and processor features, such as AVX, AVX2, and AVX512 vector instructions. No AVX will probably mean that the vast majority of pro/graphics intensive apps won't work out of the box with Rosetta.

Do those programs blindly try to execute AVX instructions without checking whether they’re supported? What happens if you're just running on an older intel processor?

Re: About the Rosetta Translation Environment

#25

Post by DCKing » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #4

>However, Rosetta doesn’t translate the following executables: Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms How will this impact docker? Does this mean you can't run x86 docker containers on new Apple laptops?

Docker has had an experimental feature for some time to build containers cross architecture [1]. I'm guessing this transition is a good excuse to finish that up. Running cross architecture containers with only Docker is not possible as far as I know.

I'm guessing that we're going to have to see a lot better adoption of cross-platform container builds because of this.

[1]: https://docs.docker.com/buildx/working-with-buildx/#build-mu...

Re: About the Rosetta Translation Environment

#26

Post by monocasa » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

nickcw wrote: post #15

I thought this was the most interesting paragraph. > What Can't Be Translated? > Rosetta can translate most Intel-based apps, including apps that contain just-in-time (JIT) compilers. I guess translation of JIT compiled stuff implies this isn't a once of translation. I guess translating plugins implies that too. It sounds like very clever stuff to me! > However, Rosetta doesn’t translate the following executables: >…

> These sound like they should be relatively straight forward to translate. I wonder why they didn't? Lack of time? Or perhaps because translating them means that they don't run fast enough to be useful and the fallback paths are likely to run quicker.

Probably because ARM's NEON doesn't have 256bit registers, greatly complicating the implementation.

Re: About the Rosetta Translation Environment

#27

Post by mtgx » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

jayyhu wrote: post #17

>Rosetta translates all x86_64 instructions, but it doesn’t support the execution of some newer instruction sets and processor features, such as AVX, AVX2, and AVX512 vector instructions. No AVX will probably mean that the vast majority of pro/graphics intensive apps won't work out of the box with Rosetta.

The vast majority of pro/graphics intensive apps (with the exception of games) will probably be the first to go native on Arm-based Macs.

Re: About the Rosetta Translation Environment

#28

Post by saagarjha » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

beervirus wrote: post #24

jayyhu wrote: post #17

>Rosetta translates all x86_64 instructions, but it doesn’t support the execution of some newer instruction sets and processor features, such as AVX, AVX2, and AVX512 vector instructions. No AVX will probably mean that the vast majority of pro/graphics intensive apps won't work out of the box with Rosetta.

Do those programs blindly try to execute AVX instructions without checking whether they’re supported? What happens if you're just running on an older intel processor?

Usually you'd want to check cpuid or similar and fall back to something reasonable.

Re: About the Rosetta Translation Environment

#29

Post by saagarjha » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #23

mrkstu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven’t clarified if Docker is ARM all the way down or if they are using QEMU to emulate x86 somewhere on the stack.

They wouldn't need qemu anywhere either way; they have their own binary translator.

Which for all we know could be qemu ;)

Re: About the Rosetta Translation Environment

#30

Post by leeter » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #22

leeter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RE AVX and above: My guess is that they are licensing the Transmeta IP which doesn't include those licenses IIRC. So unless they wanted to get sued they'd have to be careful. I suspect some SSE instructions may also not be supported as I don't recall if Transmeta had a license up to SSE4.

I doubt they're licencing Transmeta. Transmeta never had an x86_64 processor.

True, but they did have the license IIRC. Otherwise they'd be licensing from VIA or whomever owns that license now. That license AFAIK would include up to SSE4. It's not like Apple is going to tell us. But the JIT nature makes me think it's Transmeta as the company currently holding that IP is a "Patent enforcement entity".