4 ms·
> nobody else would be allowed according to Hector Martin I'm not sure of the meaning here. Is it: a. ISA extensions can't be called by any program not writte
by throwme_123 4y ago
> nobody else would be allowed according to Hector Martin
I'm not sure of the meaning here. Is it:
a. ISA extensions can't be called by any program not written by Apple? (including Asahi)
b. Nobody else but Apple has the right to have these ISA extensions, but when in Silicon, programmers can use them?
- kzrdude 4y agoIt might be something like this? c. Nobody else who licenses ARM would be allowed to add extensions to their implementation of the ISA in this way. Apple is more or less a founding member of ARM and has some other deal.
- masklinn 4y agoYes, though that's a different formulation of (2) really: > Nobody else but Apple has the right to have these ISA extensions Programmers "can" use Apple extensions because... they're extensions to the ISA, they're not documented but they can't really be blocked off unless they're ring0, and that would make them a lot less useful (the entire point of having extensions for matrix computation is to speed up matrix computations, which are not usually kernel work, and having to syscall to do them would waste the entire thing).
- saagarjha 4y agoApple exposes these behind APIs that hide these implementation details. Their own compilers never emit them. Nothing can stop you from embedding them into your binary yourself, of course, but this would be annoying to both you and Apple.