7 ms·

I wonder if this is the end of drivers for 3rd party PCIe/thunderbolt high performance NICs? I imagine that this may make Macs less viable for situations wher

I wonder if this is the end of drivers for 3rd party PCIe/thunderbolt high performance NICs? I imagine that this may make Macs less viable for situations where having a reasonably high performance 3rd party NIC is important (eg, video editing). Are there any details about DriverKit that are available? I used to be a Mac driver developer ~10 years ago or so. I did one of the first 10G drivers for Macos, and MacOS performance was always terrible compared to Linux or BSD, but I can't imagine that moving it into userspace is going to help anything. MacOS boundary crossing (eg, syscall, ioctl, and Mach traps) performed even worse than their network stack as compared to Linux/BSD.

pjmlp 7y ago
Yes, WWDC video https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/702/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/702/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/driverkit?language=objc https://developer.apple.com/documentation/driverkit?language... https://developer.apple.com/system-extensions/ https://developer.apple.com/system-extensions/ Regarding performance, on the other hand Linux/BSD still don't match macOS real time audio capabilities.
- drewg123 7y ago
  At least its found one thing to be good at.
  - fxtentacle 7y ago
    Sadly not. Many professional DAWs rely on custom kexts and are therefore advising their customers against upgrading.
- phonethrowaway 7y ago
  > Regarding performance, on the other hand Linux/BSD still don't match macOS real time audio capabilities. Got a source for that? I use a Debian machine for an audio workstation. I moved there from OSX and am using the same DAW and get less latency now. Especially because I can run a real-time kernel...
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    The source is what professional musicians get to use. They don't have to customise their kernel on the newly bought Window/macOS laptop.
    - IntelMiner 7y ago
      That doesn't line up with your original argument You said MacOS got better performance in realtime audio Just because it's what musicians "get to" use doesn't make it better. It makes it a standard
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Sure it does, macOS doesn't need a customized kernel build, it just works of the box. This is the typical answer, "Linux can do that, just need a special customised build and change a couple of config files and /proc settings on boot". This is not the same as what a standard kernel for consumer OS is supposed to be out of factory.
        fons 7y ago
        You are mixing up capabilities with inconvenience.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Then one wonders why Linux will never matter on the desktop, regardless of what Apple and Microsoft might do. Regular people aren't compiling kernels.
        einr 7y ago
        Regular people aren't compiling kernels, they're installing something like Ubuntu Studio (https://ubuntustudio.org/ https://ubuntustudio.org/) that comes with everything you need preconfigured out of the box.
- fit2rule 7y ago
  Like others, I'm finding that audio latency on Linux surpasses that of MacOS, easily. I am using Ubuntu Studio with Firewire-based audio interfaces, 50+ channels of digital audio - Linux definitely performs better than my MacOS systems, using the exact same external hardware .. except my Linux box is slower and has fewer cores than my MacBook ..
floatingatoll 7y ago
You may find this useful to consider as well as the dev links above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22251991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22251991
comex 7y ago
> Are there any details about DriverKit that are available? Yes, they're on the documentation site. Here's NetworkingDriverKit: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkingdriverkit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkingdriverki... With the fancy new userspace networking stack, I wouldn't assume that a DriverKit implementation is necessarily slower. At least compared to the old networking stack. (It says it's meant to be used "to develop drivers for USB Ethernet adapter", but I don't believe there's anything specifically tying it to USB. DriverKit currently doesn't support PCI access; I don't know if that's coming, but the PCI APIs for kexts are not deprecated, so at minimum you could write a kext just to map the device into userspace.)
- dwaite 7y ago
  PCI access is apparently coming in the March release.
jamesfmilne 7y ago
Yes DriverKit allows writing network card drivers. I was toying with trying to port the Linux Mellanox ConnectX drivers to macOS to avoid having to pay 2-3x the price for ATTO FastFrame cards. You need a special entitlement from Apple to sign network csrd drivers though. FWIW I can only get about 60Gbps out of the ATTO FastFrame on macOS versus easily 98Gbps for Mellanox ConnectX on Linux.
cmsj 7y ago
It's perhaps worth noting that macOS already has drivers for at least one 10Gb chipset, since 10Gb interfaces are present on the Mac Pro and iMac Pro, and an option on the Mac Mini.
fulafel 7y ago
Interesting that even the $6000+ Mac Pro only has 2006 era Ethernet.

pjmlp 7y ago

Yes, WWDC video https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/702/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/702/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/driverkit?language=objc https://developer.apple.com/documentation/driverkit?language... https://developer.apple.com/system-extensions/ https://developer.apple.com/system-extensions/ Regarding performance, on the other hand Linux/BSD still don't match macOS real time audio capabilities.

drewg123 7y ago
At least its found one thing to be good at.
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  Sadly not. Many professional DAWs rely on custom kexts and are therefore advising their customers against upgrading.
phonethrowaway 7y ago
> Regarding performance, on the other hand Linux/BSD still don't match macOS real time audio capabilities. Got a source for that? I use a Debian machine for an audio workstation. I moved there from OSX and am using the same DAW and get less latency now. Especially because I can run a real-time kernel...
- pjmlp 7y ago
  The source is what professional musicians get to use. They don't have to customise their kernel on the newly bought Window/macOS laptop.
  - IntelMiner 7y ago
    That doesn't line up with your original argument You said MacOS got better performance in realtime audio Just because it's what musicians "get to" use doesn't make it better. It makes it a standard
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Sure it does, macOS doesn't need a customized kernel build, it just works of the box. This is the typical answer, "Linux can do that, just need a special customised build and change a couple of config files and /proc settings on boot". This is not the same as what a standard kernel for consumer OS is supposed to be out of factory.
      - fons 7y ago
        You are mixing up capabilities with inconvenience.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Then one wonders why Linux will never matter on the desktop, regardless of what Apple and Microsoft might do. Regular people aren't compiling kernels.
        einr 7y ago
        Regular people aren't compiling kernels, they're installing something like Ubuntu Studio (https://ubuntustudio.org/ https://ubuntustudio.org/) that comes with everything you need preconfigured out of the box.
fit2rule 7y ago
Like others, I'm finding that audio latency on Linux surpasses that of MacOS, easily. I am using Ubuntu Studio with Firewire-based audio interfaces, 50+ channels of digital audio - Linux definitely performs better than my MacOS systems, using the exact same external hardware .. except my Linux box is slower and has fewer cores than my MacBook ..

floatingatoll 7y ago

You may find this useful to consider as well as the dev links above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22251991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22251991

comex 7y ago

> Are there any details about DriverKit that are available? Yes, they're on the documentation site. Here's NetworkingDriverKit: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkingdriverkit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkingdriverki... With the fancy new userspace networking stack, I wouldn't assume that a DriverKit implementation is necessarily slower. At least compared to the old networking stack. (It says it's meant to be used "to develop drivers for USB Ethernet adapter", but I don't believe there's anything specifically tying it to USB. DriverKit currently doesn't support PCI access; I don't know if that's coming, but the PCI APIs for kexts are not deprecated, so at minimum you could write a kext just to map the device into userspace.)

dwaite 7y ago
PCI access is apparently coming in the March release.

jamesfmilne 7y ago

Yes DriverKit allows writing network card drivers. I was toying with trying to port the Linux Mellanox ConnectX drivers to macOS to avoid having to pay 2-3x the price for ATTO FastFrame cards. You need a special entitlement from Apple to sign network csrd drivers though. FWIW I can only get about 60Gbps out of the ATTO FastFrame on macOS versus easily 98Gbps for Mellanox ConnectX on Linux.

cmsj 7y ago

It's perhaps worth noting that macOS already has drivers for at least one 10Gb chipset, since 10Gb interfaces are present on the Mac Pro and iMac Pro, and an option on the Mac Mini.

fulafel 7y ago

Interesting that even the $6000+ Mac Pro only has 2006 era Ethernet.