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ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

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Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#181

Post by TheNorthman »

detaro wrote: post #178
eberkund wrote: post #176

Are there any excited embedded developers in the crowd? I have done a little embedded work and cross compiling has always been a huge pain in the ass to setup. I know some people have even gone as far as purchasing expensive niche workstations with ARM CPUs specifically to avoid this problem. I feel like having a mainstream ARM platform like the MBP will make compiling software for ARM-based single board computers a…

I'd much rather have a more powerful x86 workstation for the same money than an ARM laptop. Never really had problems with cross-compile. And without support for running Linux natively, it doesn't get me much for even for the parts of testing that don't need the specific target (well, VMs maybe).

To be clear, we don't know if the ARM MacBook will be able to run Linux natively. We only know that Apple won't continue support for Boot Camp and therefor Windows anymore. Linux was never supported.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#182

Post by duskwuff »

tjoff wrote: post #166
duskwuff wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was x86 any more "open" of a platform? If anything, x86 is a far more "closed" platform, as there are only two remaining manufacturers of x86 parts, and there is no licensing process to join them. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of ARM licensees, and the process for becoming a licensee is all documented online [1]. [1]: https://www.arm.com/why-arm/how-licensing-works

How? It is absolutely inconceivable how much more open it is. Also, the CPU is but a minor part of the puzzle. But still that is still twice as many as apple (good luck exchanging that apple-arm with any other brand). Please let me know how open you think the next apple ARM platform is when you try to boot any OS not written by apple. Please compare that with a computer built from AMD/Intel with a motherboard out of…

You are confusing the x86 CPU architecture (which is closed) with the PC platform (which is relatively open).

> Also, the CPU is but a minor part of the puzzle. But still that is still twice as many as apple (good luck exchanging that apple-arm with any other brand).

Even on x86, interchangeable CPUs are the exception, not the rule. Intel and AMD CPUs haven't even used the same socket since the 1990s, and even within those manufacturers, socket incompatibilities are common.

Software interchangeability is more of an operating systems issue than an architectural one. With appropriate software shims, though, there is no reason to suspect that (for example) Linux ARM software could be run on an Apple ARM CPU. In fact, it's quite likely that tools like the Android emulator will do exactly that.

> Please compare that with a computer built from AMD/Intel with a motherboard out of dozens of manufacturers etc. Any ATX power supply etc. Pretty much any PCI-E graphics card etc.

Server-class ARM hardware generally does use similar parts as x86 servers, including power supplies and PCIe peripherals.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#183

Post by heavyset_go »

lachlan-sneff wrote: post #2

This is ridiculous. Your code will just have to support multiple architectures, which is very easy with modern languages and tooling.

There are very few packages compiled for ARM on PyPI, and there are more than a few packages on PyPI that are a pain to build from source.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#184

Post by saagarjha »

meddlepal wrote: post #130
mbreese wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Because it gives techies the nix environment they want, with the software and hardware support no one will give them on Linux. > The UNIX experience on the Mac is pretty shitty. Ancient versions of all the tooling. Command-line utils have that weird BSD well-water flavor. No package management. Funny Docker quirks. It doesn't have to be the best nix environment. Hell, it doesn't even have to be a good one. It just…

Exactly what advantage does macOS shitty Unix environment have over Windows 10 w/ WSL2?

It's not running in a virtual machine.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#185

Post by alwillis »

m000 wrote: post #87
pantalaimon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the year of the macOS desktop?

It's not about stealing users from macOS. It's about stealing developers. Hell, Apple is at the mercy of Microsoft and Adobe right now. I'd bet they had to line their pockets very well, so that they don't get any funny ideas. But Apple can't just pay-up every cross-platform software developer. Smaller developers will have to re-evaluate whether macOS remains a viable target platform for them. Which can translate to a…

Hell, Apple is at the mercy of Microsoft and Adobe right now. I'd bet they had to line their pockets very well, so that they don't get any funny ideas.

I’m sure that's not the case. It's much more in Adobe’s interest to be ARM-ready on day 1; there are plenty of Photoshop alternatives in the Mac App Store—notice they demoed Affinity Photo running on the ARM Mac and Affinity is much better at using Apple's native APIs and technologies than Adobe every was. And it's just a one-time cost of $49.99 vs. renting Photoshop from Adobe. Users of Apple devices are continue to be a large segment of their customer base.

Adobe has already migrated all of their core applications to a new codebase that should be relatively easy to bring to ARM Macs. Photoshop and several other of their apps already runs on iPadOS, so it won't be that big a deal to move it over to Big Sur.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#186

Post by josephcsible »

duskwuff wrote: post #157
tjoff wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hooray, we have successfully fixed the mistake with an open platform and will now be relegated to incompatible hardware without any competition. At last, the future will surely be bright!

How was x86 any more "open" of a platform? If anything, x86 is a far more "closed" platform, as there are only two remaining manufacturers of x86 parts, and there is no licensing process to join them. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of ARM licensees, and the process for becoming a licensee is all documented online [1]. [1]: https://www.arm.com/why-arm/how-licensing-works

It's more open in terms of what software you can run. And if you cared about hardware being open, RISC-V is where you'd have to go. ARM certainly isn't open hardware.

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#187

Post by saagarjha »

rescbr wrote: post #129
ryandvm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it gives techies the *nix environment they want, with the software and hardware support no one will give them on Linux. The UNIX experience on the Mac is pretty shitty. Ancient versions of all the tooling. Command-line utils have that weird BSD well-water flavor. No package management. Funny Docker quirks. The hardware used to be pretty nice, but honestly I'm still having trouble forgiving them for getting…

> The UNIX experience on the Mac is pretty shitty. Ancient versions of all the tooling. Command-line utils have that weird BSD well-water flavor. Well, OS X is Unix, but GNU is not Unix.

Correction: macOS is UNIX®

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#189

Post by tjoff »

duskwuff wrote: post #182
tjoff wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? It is absolutely inconceivable how much more open it is. Also, the CPU is but a minor part of the puzzle. But still that is still twice as many as apple (good luck exchanging that apple-arm with any other brand). Please let me know how open you think the next apple ARM platform is when you try to boot any OS not written by apple. Please compare that with a computer built from AMD/Intel with a motherboard out of…

You are confusing the x86 CPU architecture (which is closed) with the PC platform (which is relatively open). > Also, the CPU is but a minor part of the puzzle. But still that is still twice as many as apple (good luck exchanging that apple-arm with any other brand). Even on x86, interchangeable CPUs are the exception, not the rule. Intel and AMD CPUs haven't even used the same socket since the 1990s, and even within…

I am not. But also, how many x86 processors are sold outside of the PC platform? They have a symbiotic relationship. The foundation of everything we have today.

> Software interchangeability is more of an operating systems issue than an architectural one.

Not if the architecture is designed around keeping others out. But just not telling anyone how to do it is enough in 99% of cases. Some hacker might post a buggy proof-of-concept for an obsolete device that no one will run.

> Server-class ARM hardware generally does use similar parts as x86 servers, including power supplies and PCIe peripherals.

Wanna place a bet on what apple is going to do?

Re: ARM Mac: Why I'm Worried About Virtualization

#190

Post by tw04 »

sirn wrote: post #62
timsally wrote: post #41

It is very likely that ARM-based Macs will lack a performant hypervisor upon release. We will have to see how VMWare responds. I'd bet it will inspire new products and innovation and the desktop space will move towards a less x86-x64 centric world. In the end it is a short term problem. Someone will respond and provide a performant hypervisor that can run on an ARM host and virtualize x86-x64 and ARM guests. It's tru…

Apple has Hypervisor.framework which has been updated for ARM Mac[1]. Xhyve and HyperKit (used by Docker for Mac) uses Hypervisor.framework exclusively. The last time I tried Hypervisor.framework on x86-64, the CPU performance was quite fine (matches that of VMware/VirtualBox), but I/O was pretty abysmal. Emulating x86-64 on ARM is probably going to be a role of something similar to QEMU. [1]: https://developer.apple…

Parallels already announced they’re going to have an option. TBD on what it looks like.

https://www.parallels.com/blogs/apple-silicon-wwdc/

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