5 ms·
I wouldn’t assume that there isn’t a licence involved. Intel have clearly indicated in the past that they think licensing is a requirement for emulating x86[0]
by avianlyric 6y ago
I wouldn’t assume that there isn’t a licence involved.
Intel have clearly indicated in the past that they think licensing is a requirement for emulating x86[0].
I imagine that Apple are only emulating x86-64, since they dropped 32bit support in their last OS. I believe that x86-64 is owned by AMD, so I imagine Apple has a licensing deal with them.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2017/06/16/intel-threatens-microsoft-and-qualcomm-over-x86-emulation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2017/06/16/intel...
- saagarjha 6y agoApparently Rosetta emulates 32-bit as well (of course, the kernel will not load these binaries directly). I can only think of CrossOver that needs it, so I'm not quite sure why they went through the effort to add it…
- klelatti 6y agoI think that the legal requirements will depend on the precise instructions - eg your linked article mentions SIMD. Certainly the basic x86-64 extension to x86 originated at AMD who (due to cross license deals) licenses them to Intel but things like AVX are Intel. I suspect that code emitted by Xcode omits these newer instructions. Bear in mind too that a lot of the x86 patents will have expired by now.
- saagarjha 6y agoXcode will emit those if you ask for it, and macOS ships some binaries that use those instructions. However, Rosetta doesn't do AVX.