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Banning third-party developers from loading modules into kernel-space does not a microkernel make. Apple-approved developers are still going to be loading what
by AshamedCaptain 7y ago
Banning third-party developers from loading modules into kernel-space does not a microkernel make.
Apple-approved developers are still going to be loading whatever crap they want into kernel space, incl AMD or nVidia graphics drivers and the lot. It's not like they can convert XNU into an actual microkernel in less than a decade or two.
This just means that if you're not on the Apple-whitelist then macOS becomes a yet even more close platform for you. Wanted to developed a driver for a PCIe network card? Sorry, no can do!
- monocasa 7y agoGPUs are kind of interesting, because the kernel space part of a GPU driver is managing the MMUs, and a lot of microkernels see MMU management (even of devices) as still one of their core roles. It's basically a really legacy IOMMU inside most GPUs. Split off a user space process to kick off command list execution and respond to interrupts (most of the rest of the kernel driver these days), and I can totally see a microkernel with GPU drivers in it still being ideologically pure.