NetBSD Booting on the Apple M1
I continue to be skeptical of all the &quot;boots on Apple M1&quot; efforts. Ultimately, I don&#x27;t expect them to get much further than the &quot;proof-of-concept&quot; phase, as far as usability goes.<p>Apple&#x27;s chips are SoCs, and as such are extremely complicated systems. There are tons of parameters to make it work efficiently that either need to be carefully reverse-engineered, or out-of-reach entirely. Apple not only won&#x27;t be any help, but will be actively hindering these efforts.<p>For example, is anyone dealing with the performance modes of the chip, tuning them for performance-vs-dissipation? What about the DRAM interface?<p>Alyssa Rosenzweigs effort on reverse-engineering the GPU is impressive and laudable, but it&#x27;s just one component of the dozens or so IP blocks in the chip, each of which require that level of work.<p>Being able to boot your OS on the CPU is like landing on the beaches of Brittania and calling it conquered. (I couldn&#x27;t come up with a better analogy)<p>I understand the appeal of the technical challenge, and that&#x27;s awesome! But people should lower their expectations if they ever expect to run an open OS with the full power (or even significant fraction) of the hardware.