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Apple transitioned from x86 to ARM in less than a year. It can be done, using mix of native applications and emulation. And as long the emulation speed is ind

Apple transitioned from x86 to ARM in less than a year. It can be done, using mix of native applications and emulation. And as long the emulation speed is indistinguishable from native (Like Rosetta 2), end users won't notice it and won't complain. Google & Meta can team up to transition all their apps to RISC-V and that would be 70% of the most used daily apps, other will follow the lead.

londons_explore 4y ago
> in less than a year. I think they'd been working on it for many years beforehand. Getting the software stack ready for a new architecture, especially one where there is a lot of 3rd party code you can't touch, is a lot of work. After all, step one was porting their darwin kernel in 2007. Then the 'Unified Platform' work of 2017 made the userspace work on ARM... Then 2020 they released an ARM desktop product... So it was a lot of years!!
- stoplying1 4y ago
  I think you'd be shocked how much of my NixOS system not only natively compiles for my Vision Five but also cross compiles to it... (and Nixpkgs cross compiling support has room to improve, so..) Obviously a monorepo of largely FOSS is easier to deal with than random Android apps but I don't think it's that dire or insurmountable.
klelatti 4y ago
> And as long the emulation speed is indistinguishable from native (Like Rosetta 2), end users won't notice it and won't complain. Apple could do Rosetta 1 and 2 because the emulated CPU was considerably slower the new architecture. No evidence at all that this would be the case here.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  Apple could do Rosetta 1 in about a year because they’d been running on x86 for years internally and licensed Rosetta from QuickTransit.
  - DesiLurker 4y ago
    Hmm ..makes me wonder if something like transmeta can be revived with risc-V.
    - foobiekr 4y ago
      Well. QuickTransit was from Transitive Corporation, which was acquired by and then demolished by IBM, a bunch of the people from there are now at Apple, for one. The ideas are pretty straightforward and many of them show up in JITting emulators and high-level emulation approaches. I haven't seen an analysis of Rosetta 2 but I imagine it is pretty similar. Transmeta is different - Transmeta Crusoe etc. were a weird VLIW-like ISA plus their ISA-specific code morpher sw.
protomyth 4y ago
Apple transitioned from x86 to ARM in less than a year. Apple started a lot earlier than the announcement and hasn't completed the transition yet (Mac Pro). A lot of companies better have had RISC-V initiatives in the pipeline already.

londons_explore 4y ago

> in less than a year. I think they'd been working on it for many years beforehand. Getting the software stack ready for a new architecture, especially one where there is a lot of 3rd party code you can't touch, is a lot of work. After all, step one was porting their darwin kernel in 2007. Then the 'Unified Platform' work of 2017 made the userspace work on ARM... Then 2020 they released an ARM desktop product... So it was a lot of years!!

stoplying1 4y ago
I think you'd be shocked how much of my NixOS system not only natively compiles for my Vision Five but also cross compiles to it... (and Nixpkgs cross compiling support has room to improve, so..) Obviously a monorepo of largely FOSS is easier to deal with than random Android apps but I don't think it's that dire or insurmountable.

klelatti 4y ago

> And as long the emulation speed is indistinguishable from native (Like Rosetta 2), end users won't notice it and won't complain. Apple could do Rosetta 1 and 2 because the emulated CPU was considerably slower the new architecture. No evidence at all that this would be the case here.

foobiekr 4y ago
Apple could do Rosetta 1 in about a year because they’d been running on x86 for years internally and licensed Rosetta from QuickTransit.
- DesiLurker 4y ago
  Hmm ..makes me wonder if something like transmeta can be revived with risc-V.
  - foobiekr 4y ago
    Well. QuickTransit was from Transitive Corporation, which was acquired by and then demolished by IBM, a bunch of the people from there are now at Apple, for one. The ideas are pretty straightforward and many of them show up in JITting emulators and high-level emulation approaches. I haven't seen an analysis of Rosetta 2 but I imagine it is pretty similar. Transmeta is different - Transmeta Crusoe etc. were a weird VLIW-like ISA plus their ISA-specific code morpher sw.

protomyth 4y ago

Apple transitioned from x86 to ARM in less than a year. Apple started a lot earlier than the announcement and hasn't completed the transition yet (Mac Pro). A lot of companies better have had RISC-V initiatives in the pipeline already.