Linux Running on Apple M1 • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#41

Post by izacus » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

arafsheikh wrote: post #36

jcstryker wrote: post #12

Love to see the competition between the projects trying to get linux running on the m1. Though I think they will hit a wall trying to enable GPU support. I think opening up just enough to enable this effort also serves as some good nerd marketing for Apple. This race keeps the m1 in the news regularly, giving hope to those who want a low-power and performant ARM machine that wouldn't otherwise consider an apple machi…

A good number of comments here mention dealing with the GPU is going to be a major hurdle. What makes porting GPU drivers significantly more challenging than everything else?

They're very complex, very stateful devices which also run their own compiled shader code. Not to mention auxiliary DSPs like video decoders (not sure if M1 has it as part of GPU or a separate block), power gating control and many many more.

They may have in order of 100 registers to talk to them and they're horribly proprietary with pretty much no standardisation.

Reverse engineering that is hellish at best - you can see projects like nouveau which barely manages to get nVidia cores up and working without help from the manufacturer. And that's after years and years of development.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#42

Post by giomasce » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

jcstryker wrote: post #12

Love to see the competition between the projects trying to get linux running on the m1. Though I think they will hit a wall trying to enable GPU support. I think opening up just enough to enable this effort also serves as some good nerd marketing for Apple. This race keeps the m1 in the news regularly, giving hope to those who want a low-power and performant ARM machine that wouldn't otherwise consider an apple machi…

Someone has begun digging the GPU.

https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-1.html

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#43

Post by mschuster91 » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

arafsheikh wrote: post #36

jcstryker wrote: post #12

Love to see the competition between the projects trying to get linux running on the m1. Though I think they will hit a wall trying to enable GPU support. I think opening up just enough to enable this effort also serves as some good nerd marketing for Apple. This race keeps the m1 in the news regularly, giving hope to those who want a low-power and performant ARM machine that wouldn't otherwise consider an apple machi…

A good number of comments here mention dealing with the GPU is going to be a major hurdle. What makes porting GPU drivers significantly more challenging than everything else?

> What makes porting GPU drivers significantly more challenging than everything else?

Multiple reasons:

1) GPU manufacturers are notorious for not publishing documentation out of IP/patent concerns. Worst offender is NVIDIA here.

2) For embedded GPUs there isn't much interest in open source drivers... the big customers (think Samsung and the likes) have direct support from the chip design vendor and get drop-in drivers as part of the board support package (BSP, basically a conglomerate of bootloader, kernel+modules+initrd, firmware blobs for components such as wifi) so they don't need OSS drivers

3) The mobile GPU space is... splintered. With desktops you got the three major players AMD/ATI, NVIDIA and Intel's built-in Iris, in the GPU space there are more.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#44

Post by CivBase » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

I'm excited for Linux support on the M1. I don't even have a Mac Book, but more incentive for Linux apps to support ARM is a good thing.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#45

Post by JustFinishedBSG » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

giomasce wrote: post #42

jcstryker wrote: post #12

Love to see the competition between the projects trying to get linux running on the m1. Though I think they will hit a wall trying to enable GPU support. I think opening up just enough to enable this effort also serves as some good nerd marketing for Apple. This race keeps the m1 in the news regularly, giving hope to those who want a low-power and performant ARM machine that wouldn't otherwise consider an apple machi…

Someone has begun digging the GPU. https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-1.html

It's not just someone, she's responsible for the Panfrost drivers so there's hope :)

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#46

Post by JustFinishedBSG » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #2

Great progress already thanks to Corellium for the M1 linux projects [0][1], the PongoOS project and to all others involved. Getting GPU acceleration is now the real challenge. [0] https://github.com/corellium/preloader-m1 [1] https://github.com/corellium/linux-m1

Well. GPU, networking, power management, disk... There's more than 1 huge challenge

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#47

Post by joosters » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

CarVac wrote: post #33

BrawnLongHaul wrote: post #29

Can I have a Beowulf cluster of those? (yes, I am a grey haired BOFH)

One thing I've always wondered is... what did one do with a Beowulf cluster back when that was a thing?

Compile linux kernels and boast about the speed?

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#48

Post by ianai » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 1:57 PM UTC

I wonder whether linux could benefit from the specific architecture changes of the M1. Apple's made a big technical claim of the hardware acceleration of reference counting - another OS and toolchain optimizing around it to any extent would test their claims.

This both reads a little overly optimistic to me knowing how proprietary things are - but linux and foss software have history of running on all manner of platforms. Arguments based on: "you can only get a client machine with at max 16 gig of ram" or "you can't plunk an M1 into a server chassis with all the hardware you need" and so on may be various amounts of preliminary (we only have 1 chip from them yet and it's clearly a 'first out the door' type near-beta) to actually relevant.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#49

Post by Someone » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

jcstryker wrote: post #12

Love to see the competition between the projects trying to get linux running on the m1. Though I think they will hit a wall trying to enable GPU support. I think opening up just enough to enable this effort also serves as some good nerd marketing for Apple. This race keeps the m1 in the news regularly, giving hope to those who want a low-power and performant ARM machine that wouldn't otherwise consider an apple machi…

I know it’s entering (dark?) gray territory, license wise, but has anybody ever attempted to wrap a Mac OS driver in a Linux compatibility layer?

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#50

Post by coder543 » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #40

thomasfl wrote: post #10

A Raspberry Pi powered by something similar to the M1 or A14 bionic processor would be something. The Broadcom 1.5 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 that powers the latest raspberry pi, is nothing compared to the new processor beasts from Apple.

An Ampere or other Arm server chip would fit the bill. Aside from Apple, no one is making arm chips to serve the laptop/desktop segment. So there's this HUGE gap between the endless sea of embedded/mobile Arm chips and then jumps to a handfull of mega-many-core server chips. Apple is finally filling in one of the Arm gaps with a mid-tier chip that can handle a desktop load efficiently while an efficient GPU can handl…

> Aside from Apple, no one is making arm chips to serve the laptop/desktop segment.

You can argue that their chips in this segment are not very good, but Qualcomm is actually specifically addressing the laptop market, and they're not "no one".

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15210/qualcomm-expands-lineup...