Introduction to Apple Silicon

https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Introduction-to-Apple-Silicon

by arkj • 4 years ago

373 121 4 years ago

macintux3• 4 years ago

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...

reaperducer• 4 years ago

Important bit:

Apple gives users explicit permission to run their own OS in their EULA.

jaimex2• 4 years ago

Its not like it would matter if they didn't. It's your hardware.

userbinator• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

Yeah but they don't provide the documentation to reliably run said OS, so good luck with that.

Teknoman1172• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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)

iasay3• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

GeekyBear9• 4 years ago

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
At this point, it's pretty likely that M2 will be at feature parity with M1 with <24h of actual work.

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1542957901651685376

tomcam• 4 years ago

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.

If you were handling this situation for Apple, how would you handle customer support for non-apple OSes?

aledalgrande• 4 years ago

Agree with the sentiment of siblings. Apple writing public documentation would have a cost (server maintenance, full time technical writers, support for devs etc), and how would they justify it? Their mantra has always been a single unit formed by their hardware AND software. They are nice enough to allow you to play with the hardware and keep the security features, I don't think you should expect much more.

kmeisthax• 4 years ago

M2 is already out and marcan got it up and running in, like, a few hours. Apple actually has a fair bit of engineering discipline and doesn't shuffle registers around on a whim. This isn't exactly Intel levels of "lol let me just run MS-DOS on my brand-new gaming rig" but it's way better than most ARM vendors.

If Qualcomm or Nvidia had half the compatibility discipline Apple had, third-party images for Android hardware would absolutely be a thing.

dang• 4 years ago

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.

flyinghamster2• 4 years ago

I'm a lot less worried about Apple closing off alternate operating systems than I am about not being able to replace the SSD when it inevitably dies. I'd dearly love a Mac Studio, but not if it's guaranteed to become an expensive paperweight for lack of serviceability. I routinely keep computers 10+ years, and unless Apple's SSD can last that long without babying it to a ridiculous degree, it's a non-starter.

As someone who grew up with an Apple II+, this "no user serviceable parts inside" mentality has infuriated me about Apple since 1984, so this is nothing new. I've long wanted to love Apple products, but that footgun just has to come out.

But I'll give Apple a great deal of credit that they have (even if unofficially) helped rather than hindered the Asahi project. Make a Mac that uses off-the-shelf SSDs at the very least (RAM is a second rant), and I'd be in "shut up and take my money" mode.

OleksiiA• 4 years ago

Some kind of workaround for this might be an external bootable SSD, with 40 Gbp/s theoretical bandwidth there should be no limitation from that side at least. Just create a bootable SSD before this machine's SSD dies

pram• 4 years ago

The Studio actually has removable NAND cards though, like the Mac Pro.

bitwize• 4 years ago

Apple is playing coy. Their stance is probably something like "Macs are designed to run macOS... but yeah, this is our general purpose computer line and we can't afford the PR hit we'd get by locking them down. Yet."

macintux3• 4 years ago

Were that their attitude they’d be doing less to make it possible today.

eyelidlessness• 4 years ago

This is bonkers paranoid. Don’t ask me, reference the article linked above by one of the most prominent Linux distros on aarch64 Macs. The author is clearly qualified when clearly stating that the stance is not this nefarious.

musictubes2• 4 years ago

You can't have a good development machine that is locked down. As long as Apple wants people to write software they will have to have at least one open platform.

philistine5• 4 years ago

Not only a PR hit. We now have legislation that will force Apple to open up their iPhone. Your cynical take that Apple is waiting to do it is a mistake; they’re losing control of the iPhone as we speak because they locked it down too much.

novok• 4 years ago

This is pretty impressive and a great improvement over the current x86 status quo as far as freedom and security goes.

All that is left is a way to stop the phone home when you need to do a DFU restore if you set up the 'restore server' first as an owner when you first set up the device. I think corporations and other large organizations would find that end to end assurance useful. Also would be part of removing the dependence from apple to do activation locks and MDM for corps and nerds who want full ownership over their devices. Or some sort of offline DFU restore mode for people who need the ability to do airgapped / isolated updates and wipes.

But I also see how that can be leveraged in bad ways by some governments and thieves, so looking at the system balance they chose where a very small lynchpin moment requires phone home is and understandable compromise, even though I don't agree with it fully.. I wonder if the phone home could be done behind VPNs and such, or does it block that?

webmobdev5• 4 years ago

We should all be grateful for the time and passion the Asahi Linux (AL) team of hackers have invested in documenting (ugh, the most boring job!) and reverse-engineering the Apple Silicon Macs to port Linux to it. If you do plan to buy an Apple Silcon Mac M1 / M2 though, I'd suggest you rather hold off that and instead donate some money to the Asahi Linux team here - https://asahilinux.org/support/ instead. Despite the progress made by the AL team, the simple fact remains that these Apple Mac M1/M2 platforms can only run crippled versions of other OS, and macOS still remains the only usable OS on it. More donations to the AL team can fix this faster, and not buying these Macs will also put pressure on Apple to further delay locking down these systems more and / or (one can dream!) even force them to release more hardware literature to provide bare minimum support for alternate OS development. Donating even a small sum to AL would be money well spent compared to giving your money to a trillion dollar company that isn't bothered to support system developers.

Note that the opaque and closed nature of the Apple Silicon platform (unlike AMD / Intel or other ARM CPUs that support a plethora of OSes and allow their development) hugely constrain our consumer rights, right to repair and computing freedom.

Definitely worth referencing next time someone on HN or elsewhere claims Apple's trying to lock down their computers to running macOS only.

I do say this often here vocally that with Apple Silicon Apple does plan to lock down the Mac platform in the future. The key point though is that it will happen only once the Apple Silicon Mac platforms reach a critical level of adoption. Technically, it is trivial now for them to lock the bootloader and completely lock down every mac with a firmware update. But commercially it is not yet a viable move for them as the backlash to such a move would generate a lot of bad PR that would hurt the sale and adoption of the ARM Macs. Apple learnt that lesson when they introduced the Mac Minis with soldered RAM and SSDs - it was the worse selling Mac Mini model, and they were forced to step back, slowdown and reintroduce another model with removable RAMs.

The pattern of how Apple has been increasingly locking down the Mac platform is evident:

1. The first few Intel Mac Minis allowed you some level of customisation of both the hardware (change RAM or HDD / SSD) and software (install other full featured OS).

2. Then came the Mac Minis with soldered RAM and SSD. You could no longer customise the hardware. Software was still customisable and you could still install other OSes. (Recall that Apple even offered free drivers for another OS, i.e. Windows).

3. The current generation of M1 Mini now doesn't allow you to customise both the hardware (everything is soldered) and the software. Technically you can install other OSes, but the reality is that currently only crippled versions of Linux and xBSD is available and practically the only full-featured OS that can run on it is still macOS.

With the Apple Silicon ARM chips in the Mac, Apple is now only ONE step away from locking the bootloaders of Apple Silicon Macs any time to make it a completely closed platform like the iPhones / iPads. It has been evident that Apple has been planning this for years. It's the old - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog - trick to lull its users into not realising how their rights are slowly being encroached, while Apple marketing comes up with new ways to sell you the idea that locking down the system is for your own good.

These are very clear indicators of how Apple has been working slowly to lockdown the Mac platform like their ios platforms. The reason for this is simple - BigTech are increasingly moving towards selling everything as a service. Services - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32269915 - are more profitable because it means they create recurring income (even after the device is sold) which means more profits. And Apple's successful business model for this, that earns them billions of dollars, is the closed-platform modelof the iPhones / iPads (which ofcourse, are also powered by the same Apple Silicon but with locked bootloaders). Such closed system also help in planned obsolescence that increase sale.

macintux3• 4 years ago

One problem with this argument is that you can never be proven wrong. 20 years from now if the platform is still open, there will still be ample evidence that, as Apple tries to maintain security, instead they’re actually preparing to close the platform.

I think if they were going to lock it down, the ARM transition was the perfect opportunity. Half the computing world expected it anyway, and the number of people who care is far fewer than those who just want a robust computer.

But I can effectively never be proven correct.

saagarjha7• 4 years ago

We should all be grateful for the time and passion the Asahi Linux (AL) team of hackers have invested in documenting (ugh, the most boring job!)

I assure you that if the team found this to be incredibly boring they would not be doing it.

GeekyBear9• 4 years ago

Definitely worth referencing next time someone on HN or elsewhere claims Apple's trying to lock down their computers to running macOS only.

The Asahai Linux lead Has addressed this directly today.

Okay, it's been over a year, and it's time to end the nonsense speculation.

I have heard from several Apple employees that:

1. The boot method we use is for 3rd-party OSes, and Apple only use it to test that it works, because 2. It is policy that it works.

Apple didn't "leave the door open" for 3rd party OSes. Apple explicitly engineered 3rd party OS support in, and it is a hard policy requirement that it continue to work.

Publicly documented feature; Openly improved over time; Multiple employees confirm it's for us, not for Apple; Multiple employees confirm it's staying by policy.

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1554395176025849856

marcodiego• 4 years ago

How does it compare in terms of "philosophical freedom" compared to intel IME? Does it need many binary blobs?

Jtsummers2• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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.

duskwuff• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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).

iasay3• 4 years ago

I wonder if anyone at Apple is working on this secretly.

tasty_freeze• 4 years ago

I sure hope not, as it would compromise all the legitimate reverse engineering being done on it.

uoaei3• 4 years ago

"Compromise"? "Legitimate"?

simondotau• 4 years ago

There's an important distinction to be made between helping to make it work (e.g. explaining how the bootloader is implemented, or perhaps offering occasional code bug fixes) and directly revealing Apple intellectual property by supplying internal documentation or code written with the knowledge of internal documentation.

I'm sure there are people at Apple itching to provide documentation for things like the GPU. But given the minefield which is GPU patents I honestly don't blame Apple for deciding there's insufficient upside to revealing anything they don't have to.

rwalle• 4 years ago

My understanding is that nobody dares to do that -- Apple is likely to immediately terminate their employment if they found out about it

iasay3• 4 years ago

Well the trick is not getting found out which isn’t particularly difficult.

Daishiman• 4 years ago

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.

gzer0• 4 years ago

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.

Cyberdog• 4 years ago

Some college CS departments have courses in OS development. If that's not an option, I'd start with a textbook like Operating Systems: Design & Implementation, aka the Minix book, since it documents the development of the Minix operating system.

https://wiki.minix3.org/doku.php?id=www:documentation:start

saagarjha7• 4 years ago

Generally you’d look to learn about OS design and reverse engineering.

dento• 4 years ago

For a hands-on introduction, writing a minimal kernel in Rust, see https://os.phil-opp.com/

matheusmoreira• 4 years ago

The OSDev wiki is nice.

https://wiki.osdev.org/

AceJohnny23• 4 years ago

What is the source for the "Design Goals for AS Macs"? Has Apple or their engineers advertised these?

Certainly the "Open to other OSes" goal seems to contradict much of their trend from the past few years. (and the very same page later goes on to say "...as long as they behave like macOS")

neon_electro• 4 years ago

"Apple's approach to third-party OSes is essentially "have fun". We do not have any expectations of direct support, documentation, or additional development effort from them, nor do we expect them to attempt to hinder third-party OSes in any deliberate way. They have explicitly developed the ability to securely run third-party OSes and bootloaders on these machines, and left the rest to us."

Under the list at https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Introduction-to-Appl...

AceJohnny23• 4 years ago

That still sounds like an assumption from the community. Perhaps the "third party OSes and bootloaders" is just a side-effect of Apple's own development requirements.

On the other hand: "Apple gives users explicit permission to run their own OS in their EULA." I guess I haven't read their EULA!

saagarjha7• 4 years ago

Apple has advertised this about as explicitly as they could possibly do so without saying it publicly.

AceJohnny23• 4 years ago

I suppose Apple's public announcements are tightly controlled, so perhaps the string of clues is as much as the engineers behind this could get out.

GeekyBear9• 4 years ago

The other Apple Silicon tidbit today from Linus Torvalds in his Linux 5.19 release notes:

On a personal note, the most interesting part here is that I did the release (and am writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It's something I've been waiting for for a _loong_ time, and it's finally reality, thanks to the Asahi team. We've had arm64 hardware around running Linux for a long time, but none of it has really been usable as a development platform until now.

Not that I've used it for any real work, I literally have only been doing test builds and boots and now the actual release tagging. But I'm trying to make sure that the next time I travel, I can travel with this as a laptop and finally dogfooding the arm64 side too.

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0X...

jshzglr2• 4 years ago

Why is everyone so incredibly cynical. Is it possible Apple did this because they thought it made "business sense". The same reason they do anything else.

classified• 4 years ago

Years of observation and experience. What makes business sense to Apple (or anyone) is not always in the user's best interest.

jshzglr2• 4 years ago

According to who? You don’t have perfect information to know the reasons.

Sakos• 4 years ago

A lot of things make business sense that aren't good for users/customers or people in general. It making good business sense isn't sufficient reason to judge it as good or justified.

bitL• 4 years ago

Is there any value in Asahi Linux given GPU won't be likely supported for the next 10+ years (based on how long it took for regular Linux to get decent Nvidia and Radeon open source drivers and those didn't rely on any crypto chips)? It seems like a nice toy project without much value.

badrabbit• 4 years ago

You can still boot the os and browse the internet right? Seems viable as a dev laptop.

randyrand• 4 years ago

You do have to click through Apple's EULA in order to use the machines at all.

Someone does. You can walk up to a Mac at a friends house and use it without accepting any EULA.

The machine doesn't physically check who accepted the EULA.

You can do everything without ever accepting a EULA yourself.

Introduction to Apple Silicon

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