12 ms·

I hope Rosetta is here to stay and continues developement. And I hope what is learned from it can be used to make a RISC-V version of it. translating native ARM

• masklinn 4y ago
  > I hope Rosetta is here to stay and continues developement. It almost certainly is not. Odds are Apple will eventually remove Rosetta II, as they did Rosetta back in the days, once they consider the need for that bridge to be over (Rosetta was added in 2006 in 10.4, and removed in 2011 from 10.7). > And I hope what is learned from it can be used to make a RISC-V version of it. translating native ARM to RISC-V should be much easier than x86 to ARM as I understand it, so one could conceivably do x86 -> ARM -> RISC-V. That's not going to happen unless Apple decides to switch from ARM to RISC-V, and... why would they? They've got 15 years experience and essentially full control on ARM.
  • quux 4y ago
    It would be funny/not funny if in a few years Apple removes Rosetta 2 for Mac apps but keeps the Linux version forever so docker can run at reasonable speeds.
  • stu2b50 4y ago
    Rosetta 1 had a ticking time bomb. Apple was licensing it from a 3rd party. Rosetta 2 is all in house as far as we know. Different CEO as well. Jobs was more opinionated on “principles” - Cook is more than happy to sell what people will buy. I think Rosetta 2 will last.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • TillE 4y ago
      What important Intel-only macOS software is going to exist in five years? It's basically only games and weird tiny niches, and Apple is pretty happy to abandon both those categories. The saving grace is that there's very few interesting Mac-exclusive games in the Intel era.
      • flomo 4y ago
        Yeah, Apple killed all "legacy" 32-bit support, so one would think there's not much software which is both x86-64 and not being actively developed.
        • astrange 4y ago
          Rosetta 2 can run 32-bit software, there just isn't a 32-bit macOS anymore so the only client is WINE.
        • vxNsr 4y ago
          2006 Apple was very different from 2011 Apple, renewing that license in 2011 was probably considered cost prohibitive for the negligible benefit.
      • rerx 4y ago
        Starting with Ventura, Linux VMs can use Rosetta 2 to run x64 executables. I expect x64 Docker containers to remain relevant for quite a few years to come. Running those at reasonable speeds on Apple Silicon would be huge for developers.
    • dmitriid 4y ago
      > Jobs was more opinionated on “principles” - Cook is more than happy to sell what people will buy. Well, the current "principle" is "iOS is enough, we're going to run iOS apps on MacOS, and that's it". Rosetta isn't needed for that.
      • dmitriid 4y ago
        It's strange to see people downvoting this when three days ago App Store on MacOS literally defaulted to searching iOS and iPad apps for me https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1589179351572312066 https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1589179351572312066
    • masklinn 4y ago
      > Rosetta 1 had a ticking time bomb. Apple was licensing it from a 3rd party. Yes, I'm sure Apple had no way of extending the license. > Cook is more than happy to sell what people will buy. I think Rosetta 2 will last. There's no "buy" here. Rosetta is complexity to maintain, and an easy cut. It's not even part of the base system. And “what people will buy” certainly didn’t prevent essentially removing support for non-hidpi displays from MacOS. Which is a lot more impactful than Rosetta as far as I’m concerned.
      • NavinF 4y ago
        > removing support for non-hidpi displays from MacOS Did that really reduce sales? Consider that the wide availability of crappy low end hardware gave Windows laptops a terrible reputation. Eg https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/yof7va/friends_dont_let_friends_run_win10_with_4gb_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/yof7va/frien...
        • masklinn 4y ago
          > Consider that the wide availability of crappy low end hardware gave Windows laptops a terrible reputation. Standard DPI displays are not "crappy low-end hardware"? I don't think there's a single widescreen display which qualifies as hiDPI out there, that more or less doesn't exist: a 5K 34" is around 160 DPI (to say nothing of the downright pedestrian 5K 49" like the G9 or the AOC Agon).
          • adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
            dpi isn't the right metric. you don't keep a phone the same distance as a 49" monitor.
            • Dylan16807 4y ago
              DPI works fine as long as the type of device is in the context. The context here is desktop/laptop.
            • 4y ago
    • kitsunesoba 4y ago
      We’ll see, but even post-Cook Apple historically hasn’t liked the idea of third parties leaning on bridge technologies for too long. Things like Rosetta are offered as temporary affordances to allow time for devs to migrate, not as a permanent platform fixture.
    • bpye 4y ago
      They’ve also allowed Rosetta 2 in Linux VMs - if they are serious about supporting those use cases then I think it’ll stay.
  • Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
    >That's not going to happen unless Apple decides to switch from ARM to RISC-V, and... why would they? They've got 15 years experience and essentially full control on ARM. Two points here. • First off, Apple developers are not binded to Apple. The knkwledge gained can be used elsewhere. See Rivos and Nuvia for example. • Second, Apple reportedly has already ported many of it's secondary cores to RISC-V. It's not unreasonable that they will switch in 10 years or so.
    • jrmg 4y ago
      Apple reportedly has already ported many of it's secondary cores to RISC-V Really? In current hardware or is this speculation?
      • Symmetry 4y ago
        If you've got some management core somewhere in your silicon you can, with RISC-V, give it a MMU but no FPU and save area. You're going to be writing custom embedded code anyways so you get to save silicon by only incorporating the features that you need instead of having to meet the full ARM spec. And you can add your own custom instructions for the job at hand pretty easily. That would all be a terrible idea if you were doing it for a core intended to run user applications, but that's not what Apple, Western Digital, NVidia are embracing RISC-V for embedded cores. If I were ARM I'd honestly be much more worried about RISC-V's threat to my R and M series cores than my A series cores.
        • my123 4y ago
          Arm64 allows FPU-less designs. There are some around…
          • Symmetry 4y ago
            Sure. The FPU is optional on a Cortex M2, for instance. But those don't have MMUs. You'd certainly need an expensive architectural license to make something with an MMU but no FPU if you wanted to and given all the requirements ARM normally imposes for software compatibility[1] between cores I'd tend to doubt that they'd let you make something like that. [1] Explicitly testing that you don't implement total store ordering by default is one requirement I've heard people talk about to get a custom core licensed.
  • CharlesW 4y ago
    > Odds are Apple will eventually remove Rosetta II, as they did Rosetta back in the days, once they consider the need for that bridge to be over (Rosetta was added in 2006 in 10.4, and removed in 2011 from 10.7). The difference is that Rosetta 1 was PPC → x86, so its purpose ended once PPC was a fond memory. Today's Rosetta is a generalized x86 → ARM translation environment that isn't just for macOS apps. For example, it works with Apple's new virtualization framework to support running x86_64 Linux apps in ARM Linux VMs. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/running_intel_binaries_in_linux_vms_with_rosetta https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...
  • gumby 4y ago
    > That's not going to happen unless Apple decides to switch from ARM to RISC-V, and... why would they? They've got 15 years experience and essentially full control on ARM. 15? More than a quarter century. They were one of the original investors in ARM and have produced plenty of arm devices since then beyond the newton and the ipod. I’d bet they use a bunch of risc v internally too if they just need a little cpu to manage something locally on some device and just want to avoid paying a tiny fee to ARM or just want some experience with it. But RISC V as the main CPU? Yes, that’s a long way away, if ever. But apple is good at the long game. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Apple has iOS running on RISC V, but even something like the lightning-to-HDMI adapter runs IOS on ARM.
    • masklinn 4y ago
      > 15? More than a quarter century. They were one of the original investors in ARM and have produced plenty of arm devices since then beyond the newton and the ipod. They didn't design their own chips for most of that time.
      • gumby 4y ago
        At the same time as the ARM investment they had a Cray for...chip design.
        • masklinn 4y ago
          Yes and? Apple invested in ARM and worked with ARM/Acorn on what would become ARM6, in the early 90s. The newton uses it (specifically the ARM610), it is a commercial failure, later models use updated ARM CPUs to which AFAIK Apple didn't contribute (DEC's StrongARM, and ARM's ARM710). <15 years pass> Apple starts working on bespoke designs again around the time they start working on the iPhone, or possibly after they realise it's succeeding. That doesn't mean they stopped using ARM in the meantime (they certainly didn't). The iPod's SoC was not even designed internally (it was contracted out to PortalPlayer, later generations were provided by Samsung). 15 times and the revolution of Jobs' return (and his immediate killing of the Newton) is a long time for an internal team of silicon designers.
  • preisschild 4y ago
    > They've got 15 years experience and essentially full control on ARM. Do they? ARM made it very clear that they consider all ARM cores their own[1] [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/07/opinion_qualcomm_vs_arm/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/07/opinion_qualcomm_vs_a...
    • nicoburns 4y ago
      Apple is in a somewhat different position to Qualcomm in that they were a founding member of ARM. I've also heard rumours that aarch64 was designed by apple and donated to ARM (hence why apple was so early to release an aarch64 processor). So I somewhat doubt ARM will be a position to sue them any time soon.
    • danaris 4y ago
      The Qualcomm situation is based on breaches of a specific agreement that ARM had with Nuvia, which Qualcomm has now bought. It's not a generalizable "ARM thinks everything they license belongs to them fully in perpetuity" deal.
    • masklinn 4y ago
      > Do they? They do, yes. They were one of the founding 3 members of ARM itself, and the primary monetary contributor. Through this they acquired privileges which remain extant: they can literally add custom instructions to the ISA (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29798744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29798744), something there is no available license for. > ARM made it very clear that they consider all ARM cores their own[1] The Qualcomm situation is a breach of contract issue wrt Nuvia, it's a very different issue, and by an actor with very different privileges.
      • Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
        Is there a real source for this claim? It gets parroted a lot on HN and elsewhere, but I've also heard it's greatly exagerated. I don't think Apple engineers get to read the licences, and even if they did, how do we know they understood it corretly and that it got repeated correctlty? I've never seen a valid source for this claim.
  • kccqzy 4y ago
    > They've got 15 years experience Did you only start counting from 2007 when the iPhone was released? All the iPods prior to that were using ARM processors. The Apple Newton was using ARM processors.
    • EricE 4y ago
      iPods and Newton were entirely different chips and OS's. The first iPods weren't even on an OS that Apple created - they licensed it.
    • masklinn 4y ago
      > All the iPods prior to that were using ARM processors. Most of the original device was outsourced and contracted out (for reasons of time constraint and lack of internal expertise). PortalPlayer built the SoC and OS, not Apple. Later SoC were sourced from SigmaTel and Samsung, until the 3rd gen Touch. > The Apple Newton was using ARM processors. The Apple Newton was a completely different Apple, and there were several years' gap between Jobs killing the Newton and the birth of iPod, not to mention the completely different purpose and capabilities. There would be no newton-type project until the iPhone. Which is also when Apple started working with silicon themselves: they acquired PA in 2008, Intrinsity in 2010, and Passif in 2013, released their first partially in-house SoC in 2010 (A4), and their first in-house core in 2013 (Cyclone, in the A7).
• klelatti 4y ago
  More likely to be useful RISC-V to Arm then Apple can support running virtual machines for another architecture on its machines.
• rowanG077 4y ago
  I hope not. Rosetta 2, as cool as it is, is a crutch to allow Apple to transition away from x86. If it keeps beeing needing it's a massive failure for Apple and the ecosystem.