[HN Gopher] Introduction to Apple Silicon
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Introduction to Apple Silicon
Author : arkj
Score : 119 points
Date : 2022-08-01 19:53 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| macintux wrote:
| The overview document makes for an interesting read. Definitely
| worth referencing next time someone on HN or elsewhere claims
| Apple's trying to lock down their computers to running macOS
| only.
|
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Introduction-to-Appl...
| dang wrote:
| Discussed (a bit) here:
|
| _AsahiLinux 's Introduction to Apple Silicon_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699794 - March 2022 (5
| comments)
|
| Edit: I think it makes sense for us to change the URL from
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Apple-Silicon-Subsys...
| to this.
|
| Lists of other pages tend not to make good HN submissions--as
| HN itself is already a list of pages, it's too much
| indirection. It's better to submit the most interesting element
| of the list. If there's a more interesting page than the
| overview one, we can change the above URL again.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| There is a huge difference between not physically locking
| people out of running custom software and legitimately being
| able to claim you support other operating systems. Requiring
| that a community exist that is willing to spend many years of
| collective time reverse engineering your products when you
| could have just released documentation is still a massive
| middle finger to everyone.
|
| The problem with these 100% vertically integrated stacks is
| that every hardware release could be completely different and
| it'll take years to catch up with just that release. In the
| intervening time more hardware generations were released - It's
| been 18 months since the M1 release. Asahi doesn't have 3D
| acceleration, video encode/decode acceleration, or support for
| many of the things that make Apple Silicon any good (i.e. the
| fixed function / low power consumption hardware for the
| majority of user tasks). At this rate it's going to be years
| before it's "done" and we already have a successor generation
| of hardware.
|
| I'll leave you with a quote from the Asahi docs
|
| > Development for an undocumented platform is a treadmill of
| work. Every new feature requires reverse engineering the
| relevant hardware, writing drivers, testing those drivers, then
| getting them upstreamed. Even after a driver is upstreamed,
| maintenance and optimisation is sometimes required, for example
| if Apple introduce a breaking change to any firmware we are
| required to interface with. For developers the work is never
| really done
|
| It's the same reason we don't have third-party images for most
| Android phones that are anything beyond tweaks of existing
| Android images.
| iseanstevens wrote:
| It's been 18 months on an entirely new platform and a small
| team of (BRILLIANT) people did such a good job discovering
| and porting to undocumented hardware that it worked on the M2
| hardware essentially before it started shipping.
|
| I don't think Apple is trying to get in their way.
|
| Also... developing for documented hardware is also an endless
| treadmill of work as it evolves/new products are released.
|
| It just has much less uncertainty.
|
| I 100% agree it would be awesome if Apple released full
| documentation. Broadcom too. Probably others.
|
| (All IMHO)
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| > small team of (BRILLIANT) people
|
| I wasn't trying to take anything away from them at all.
| It's astounding what they're accomplishing but the fact
| that it's necessary for this situation to exist at all is
| what I'm mainly commenting about.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| Ah, does not releasing full documentation not count as
| Apple "trying to get in their way"? Not trying to be
| snarky, genuinely trying to figure out how folks draw the
| line, since in my head, keeping documentation private
| smells like obstructionism.
| soneil wrote:
| If it's obstructionism it's passively so. They've done
| nothing to actively obstruct. They've also done nothing
| to help. When they say they don't support it they're not
| kidding, they don't just mean capital-S support.
|
| If I had to put as label on their stance, it'd be
| "chaotic neutral".
| iasay wrote:
| It's difficult to have an opinion here as I've seen both
| sides. While compatibility is nice, if you start kicking out
| reference hardware documentation you instantly open up
| several additional cans of worms from upstream IP licensing
| to crappy clone repair parts appearing on the market.
|
| But realistically with Apple you don't know what's going to
| happen. They could be silent forever. They could suddenly
| dump a whole pack of documentation out tomorrow. An official
| position would be nice.
|
| Switching it round though, 99.99% of customers are buying a
| toaster. I put bread in. It makes toast. I eat toast. Does it
| make commercial sense to support the 0.01% use case? That's
| their equivalent model of supporting the iPhone 5's market
| share for example.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Does Apple have less reason to lock things down now? Being
| fully vertically integrated, with possibly the best mobile
| hardware in town, do they care that people will buy their
| hardware just to run Linux?
|
| Help is good. But getting out of the way sounds like a good
| consolation prize.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Important bit:
|
| _Apple gives users explicit permission to run their own OS in
| their EULA._
| jaimex2 wrote:
| Its not like it would matter if they didn't. It's your
| hardware.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Tell that to Nintendo.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| It's baffling how outright hostile Nintendo sometimes can
| be to its most devoted fans. And it's not even new -
| they've gotten away with it since the moment they stepped
| into video games.
| est31 wrote:
| On a technical level, you can't install third party OSs
| without accepting the EULA first. Whether such acceptance
| has legal meaning, I don't know, and it probably depends on
| jurisdiction.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > On a technical level, you can't install third party OSs
| without accepting the EULA first.
|
| You absolutely can (no EULA when booting into recovery
| partition), and I'm also fairly sure that acceptance
| would be legally void, as it only applies to the
| software. The hardware you own, it's not licensed to you.
|
| And thanks to the first sale doctrine, there's nothing
| stopping someone from starting to sell M1/M2 MacBooks
| running Asahi commercially.
| owow123 wrote:
| "On a technical level..."
|
| Sorry, what? Does buying a device from Apple
| contractually oblige me to turn on the phone and agree to
| the EULA on "first run"? What about second hand markets?
|
| What if I was smart / tooled up enough to replace the
| Iphone flash storage with my own OS (without running
| "first run")?
|
| At what "technical level" would what your saying make any
| sense? Because it seems far more like a "contractual
| condition of purchase" (I appear to have made that term
| up) issue vs a "technical" issue to me.
| userbinator wrote:
| Indeed, the fact that it even has to do so is the important
| bit, and reflects the attitude of such companies (and to a
| certain extent, the government) today.
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah but they don't provide the documentation to reliably run
| said OS, so good luck with that.
| gzer0 wrote:
| How does one even begin to start learning about this subject?
| This is quite fascinating, I've always wanted to learn about
| OSes, the underlying mechanisms... all of that. The sheer depth
| of knowledge and technical-know how is truly incredible. I find
| it hard to even begin, there's so many resources out there.
| marcodiego wrote:
| How does it compare in terms of "philosophical freedom" compared
| to intel IME? Does it need many binary blobs?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > This puts them somewhere between x86 PCs and a libre-first
| system like the Talos II in terms of freedom to replace
| firmware and boot components; while a number of blobs are
| required in order to boot the system, none of those have the
| ability to take over the OS or compromise it post-boot (unlike,
| say, Intel ME and AMD PSP on recent systems, or the DMA-capable
| chips on the LPC bus running opaque blobs that exist on even
| old ThinkPads).
|
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Introduction-to-Appl...
| - list of firmware blobs
| als0 wrote:
| Compared to the iME, not much, since at least the secure
| enclave subsystem won't run any non-Apple code. The scary
| difference about the iME is that it is directly connected to
| the network.
| vetinari wrote:
| Intel ME is _not_ connected to the network. Intel AMT (vPro)
| is. You have to pay extra to get it, and there are extra
| conditions to be fulfilled (LAN or Wifi must be Intel).
|
| The difference wrt. Apple Silicon is, that AS firmware blobs
| run on separate chips and 1) cannot access the main memory
| freely; they are gated behind IOMMU and 2) there's no SMM
| equivalent for any of them, so the main CPU time cannot be
| stolen by firmware.
| dapids wrote:
| 100% this
| duskwuff wrote:
| Eh, I'd say the differences go deeper than that. Secure
| Enclave doesn't appear to have any special access to other
| resources on the system (like memory), it's initialized by
| the operating system, not by pre-boot firmware, and the rest
| of the system works perfectly fine if you leave the SEP
| uninitialized.
| peawee wrote:
| Pretty well outlined here:
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Introduction-to-Appl...
|
| > while a number of blobs are required in order to boot the
| system, none of those have the ability to take over the OS or
| compromise it post-boot (unlike, say, Intel ME and AMD PSP on
| recent systems, or the DMA-capable chips on the LPC bus running
| opaque blobs that exist on even old ThinkPads).
| iasay wrote:
| I wonder if anyone at Apple is working on this secretly.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I sure hope not, as it would compromise all the legitimate
| reverse engineering being done on it.
| uoaei wrote:
| "Compromise"? "Legitimate"?
| Daishiman wrote:
| Coming in as an Apple skeptic, I'm fairly impressed in the
| balance Apple has done between user security and device openness.
| This definitely sounds like a well designed architecture.
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(page generated 2022-08-01 23:00 UTC)