Ask HN: Why Apple Rosetta can not emulate kernel extensions

#1

Post by pushkar2911 » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:00 AM UTC

As we can see from the Apple Rosetta documentation, the Rosetta layer can not emulate the x86 kernel extensions. I am trying to understand why this is the case. If someone knows the answer to this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Link to Rosetta [documentation](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_silicon/about_the_rosetta_translation_environment)

Re: Ask HN: Why Apple Rosetta can not emulate kernel extensions

#2

Post by arthurcolle » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:17 AM UTC

out with the old, in with the New... Apple Extensions

“We wanted to redefine how developers approach and consider their extensions to the macOS Kernel. Introducing Apple Extensions: while beautiful, simple and light, they are extremely flexible, in ways that go far beyond traditional extensions. We knew we could keep it lighter than ever, while extending our state of the art extensions in new and more powerful ways. We reduced power consumption 62.3% based on our new stochastic power model, while increasing the number of supported colors to 16 quintillion (far greater than the range of a human eye). Our newest integration in the macOS Kernel, Quantum Core, perceives the subtle changes in mood in order to promote well-being and happiness, while deleting data that promotes unhappiness.”

Re: Ask HN: Why Apple Rosetta can not emulate kernel extensions

#3

Post by checker659 » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

Kernel extensions are deprecated. Perhaps not supporting them was a design decision rather than some tech limitation?

That or rosetta is only meant for userspace.

Re: Ask HN: Why Apple Rosetta can not emulate kernel extensions

#4

Post by olliej » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

The rosetta documentation and one of the talks yesterday said the a rosetta process can't be mixed architectures , e.g it's either all native, or all rosetta.

Obviously the kernel has to take the native path :D