Initial Apple M1 SoC Support Aims For Linux 5.13 Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Initial Apple M1 SoC Support Aims For Linux 5.13 Kernel

While the independent effort to get the Apple M1 ARM-based SoC working under Linux has just been happening for a few months, with the upcoming Linux 5.13 cycle the very preliminary support for Apple's M1 and initial M1-powered devices looks to land...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...For-Linux-5.13

[Jumbotron]

YES !! Just another milestone in the inevitable march to make ARM a first class and performant desktop citizen. Although this work benefits Linux explicitly all aquired and revealed knowledge helps other platforms as well such as ChromeOS and even Windows. Yes, they have already been working independently on ARM based products, but knowledge is accretive, accumalitive. The stone age chipping tool to make stone arrowheads and stone axes have morphed into 3-D Printing of today.

The AGE of ARM is here. x86 is legacy.

[schmidtbag]

The graphics situation will be interesting, because I wouldn't be surprised if it was purpose-built for Metal, where maybe it lacks the instructions necessary to do Vulkan or OpenGL.

[amxfonseca]

The graphics situation will be interesting, because I wouldn't be surprised if it was purpose-built for Metal, where maybe it lacks the instructions necessary to do Vulkan or OpenGL.

It may be optimized for Metal since it is the macOS main graphics API. But it definitely runs OpenGL since macOS still provides OpenGL API on the current M1 machines. It is deprecated though, so no one should expect a stellar implementation

[obri]

Why should someone do this work?
Is it so much fun?

[stormcrow]

It may be optimized for Metal since it is the macOS main graphics API. But it definitely runs OpenGL since macOS still provides OpenGL API on the current M1 machines. It is deprecated though, so no one should expect a stellar implementation

I believe MacOS OpenGL is stalled at v3.something. It's not been stellar for a long time. I have no clue how much software actually uses Metal on Macs, especially when it's cross platform like so much software tends to be these days. That's coming from a (inexperienced- my first is an M1 MBP) Mac owner.

obri
Because they can, like most hardware hackers.
Yes.
We all get our kicks in different ways.

[milkylainen]

The AGE of ARM is here. x86 is legacy.

Actually. The ARM ISA is about as old as x86.
The difference is a couple of years.

[Awesomeness]

YES !! Just another milestone in the inevitable march to make ARM a first class and performant desktop citizen.

As long as consumer hardware doesn't support the ServerReady standard, I don't see the benefit of having to build a dedicated distribution image for each ARM device. Obviously Apple does not support that standard.

[simburde]

Apple would never release M1 GPU/VPU firmware, so don't hold your breath for mainline Linux support at all.

[ALRBP]

There will never be proper support for Apple hardware under Linux, because Apple don't want that to happen. That does not mean there will never be non-Apple ARM laptops with good Linux support.