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I wonder if and when ditching the x64-compatibility layer would be feasible. As far as my limited knowledge goes without checking, ARM builds for major Mac sof
by moritzwarhier 3y ago
I wonder if and when ditching the x64-compatibility layer would be feasible.
As far as my limited knowledge goes without checking, ARM builds for major Mac software is already the norm for commercial software, but the lines get blurry sometimes. Just a guess in the blue, but I think if compatibility exists at a library level, it might take long until requiring ARM-specific builds for all code becomes mandatory.
- gattilorenz 3y agoThe original Rosetta (PPC to x86) lasted only 5 years. IIRC the previous version was a cost for Apple due to licensing agreements or something, but in general they are not so big on retrocompatibility (and nowadays it’s “legal” to have a VM which runs an earlier version of macOS, which could let you run Rosetta 2). I wouldn’t be surprised if Rosetta 2 stopped existing “soon”.
- arthur2e5 3y agoDitching Rosetta 2 would mean a lot of application support going down the drain (including Crossover/Wine), but such things really haven’t stopped Apple before. On the other hand the Linux VM support at least shows that Apple has interest in building on top of Rosetta 2. Windows arm64 has a very interesting approach to the same problem: the ARM64EC ABI provides 1-to-1 mapping between x64 and ARM registers, so that an x64 program can link to a ARM64EC library. It blocks you out from additional registers sadly.