Live data from Hacker News

VirtualBuddy: Virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon

github.com

21–30 of 65 posts

Re: VirtualBuddy: Virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon

#21

This looks like a better open-source option: https://github.com/KhaosT/MacVM

> This looks like a better open-source option

Comparing the code between the two, VirtualBuddy seems like the better option to me (albeit not by a lot though). They are both lightweight wrappers around MacOS’s built in hypervisor, so I’m really not sure what you’re going on.

Re: VirtualBuddy: Virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you have an opinion about this, can you explain why one option is better than the other?

VirtualBuddy is still experimental

> VirtualBuddy is still experimental

Really? You’ve gotta be trolling, right?

Re: VirtualBuddy: Virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon

#25
post #3
post #2

Is virtualizing aarch64 macos via qemu on aarch64 Linux within the realm of possibility? I know it can be done for x86-64, but would be pretty cool if an aarch64 kvm hackintosh would be possible. I have an Nvidia Jetson AGX and honeycomb lx2 which in theory could be up to the task.

There are additional instructions only available on Apple chips beyond the aarch64 standard, so I don't think that this could be done in hardware (someone correct me if I'm wrong because this isn't my area) Of course it's possible in software in principle but obviously that would be awful.

Apple has their own custom conventions and ABI (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/writing-arm6...). I believe you are right that they have their own custom instructions too. The asahi Linux project has good documentation on their wiki about the hardware.

Also important here is the bespoke ASIC functionality on their CPUs - as it's a system on chip, you'll likely need to emulate the full SoC, including all the peripherals the system expects to be there. Unlike x86_64, ARM isn't really designed to do device discovery on extensible buses in the same way. Your peripherals should all be in the same place, many being on the chip on internal interconnects.

Emulating anything would be possible with enough effort. But you'd likely need to emulate a whole host of extra bespoke silicon functionality on the SoC to get it working. For example, given every ARM Mac has a hardware neural engine, you might find unmodified Mac OS assumes it's there and usable for core functionality (or does so in future). It would probably be a lot of work to emulate all of the extra SoC stuff to the point you could boot the OS unmodified. But nothing is impossible - I think iOS has been run in third party emulators etc.

Re: VirtualBuddy: Virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon

#26
post #2

Is virtualizing aarch64 macos via qemu on aarch64 Linux within the realm of possibility? I know it can be done for x86-64, but would be pretty cool if an aarch64 kvm hackintosh would be possible. I have an Nvidia Jetson AGX and honeycomb lx2 which in theory could be up to the task.

I fooled around with this for a weekend, learnt a lot about qemu and friends.

So there is this: https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2021/05/strong-arming-with-m...

And there is also work around getting iOS to boot, which could pave the way for future work. https://github.com/sickcodes/Docker-eyeOS

Post reply on HN