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Google is developing Fuchsia as a possible replacement for Android's Linux kernel. Are there any reports or rumors about Apple developing a next-generation kern

Google is developing Fuchsia as a possible replacement for Android's Linux kernel. Are there any reports or rumors about Apple developing a next-generation kernel (perhaps with a safe language like Swift and optimized for mobile devices) to eventually replace Mach/XNU and its historical baggage?

pjmlp 7y ago
They are moving all drivers to user space. All the ones corresponding to the former IO Kit do require C++, all the remaining categories are going to be supported from Swift as well. This is planned to take place across several releases, at the end of which no kernel drivers will be any longer allowed.
- andrekandre 7y ago
  > They are moving all drivers to user space. probably you mean 3-rd party drivers? or even apple internally? [edit] i couldn’t tell that from the slides mentioned below, but maybe i missed something > All the ones corresponding to the former IO Kit do require C++ yea, which leads me to believe if apple was to rewrite the kernel, they probably would go with c++ ... or maybe it’s just that swift doesn’t have its embedded chops up to snuff yet... relevant slides: https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2019/702vygott3n041/702/702_system_extensions_and_driverkit.pdf?dl=1 https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2019/702vygot...
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Watch the presentation, as it contains more information as the slides. The long term roadmap is as follows: 1 - surface kernel APIs for a specific driver model as userspace API 2 - deprecate for the respective OS release the kernel entry points related to the newly surfaced driver model 3 - remove the kernel api on the following OS release 4 - rinse and repeat untill there aren't any kernel driver APIs left The ones being released with Catalina are just the first wave.
    - andrekandre 7y ago
      thanks! i’ll watch the video then, very interesting
      - cpeterso 7y ago
        Here's the video of that "System Extensions and DriverKit" session from WWDC 2019: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/702/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/702/
        andrekandre 7y ago
        thanks, watching it now ^^

pjmlp 7y ago

They are moving all drivers to user space. All the ones corresponding to the former IO Kit do require C++, all the remaining categories are going to be supported from Swift as well. This is planned to take place across several releases, at the end of which no kernel drivers will be any longer allowed.

andrekandre 7y ago
> They are moving all drivers to user space. probably you mean 3-rd party drivers? or even apple internally? [edit] i couldn’t tell that from the slides mentioned below, but maybe i missed something > All the ones corresponding to the former IO Kit do require C++ yea, which leads me to believe if apple was to rewrite the kernel, they probably would go with c++ ... or maybe it’s just that swift doesn’t have its embedded chops up to snuff yet... relevant slides: https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2019/702vygott3n041/702/702_system_extensions_and_driverkit.pdf?dl=1 https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2019/702vygot...
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Watch the presentation, as it contains more information as the slides. The long term roadmap is as follows: 1 - surface kernel APIs for a specific driver model as userspace API 2 - deprecate for the respective OS release the kernel entry points related to the newly surfaced driver model 3 - remove the kernel api on the following OS release 4 - rinse and repeat untill there aren't any kernel driver APIs left The ones being released with Catalina are just the first wave.
  - andrekandre 7y ago
    thanks! i’ll watch the video then, very interesting
    - cpeterso 7y ago
      Here's the video of that "System Extensions and DriverKit" session from WWDC 2019: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/702/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/702/
      - andrekandre 7y ago
        thanks, watching it now ^^