NetBSD Booting on the Apple M1
I continue to be skeptical of all the "boots on Apple M1" efforts. Ultimately, I don't expect them to get much further than the "proof-of-concept" phase, as far as usability goes.<p>Apple'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'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'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't come up with a better analogy)<p>I understand the appeal of the technical challenge, and that'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.