Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Apple Silicon and Virtualization

bmalehorn (via Hacker News, Reddit):

Why can’t you update the Docker image to also support ARM? You theoretically could switch your backend to run ARM Linux. However, this would take months - renting out ARM instances, re-building all repositories, and a tense switch over. What if your hosting provider doesn’t offer ARM instances with the same system requirements as x86_64? What if you complete this migration and find it runs at half the speed?

Worse, it might be impossible if your images include files downloaded off the internet, as those are often only compiled for x86_64.

[…]

Boot Camp will definitely not be available on ARM Macs. It might be added later with the ability to run ARM Windows, though Microsoft would have to approve.

Gerald (via Hacker News):

With the Mac having the same hardware as the target devices, there’s consistency and no hidden surprises. Whenever the development cycle is shortened and opaque differences removed, it’s a good thing.

[…]

What about the downside of Docker becoming 2 to 5x slower without hypervisor? While that is indeed a downside, I’d argue that for local Docker instances, they are better used for functional testing and not part of the core development cycle.

Previously:

Update (2020-07-30): Shac Ron:

Apple didn’t demo Windows on ARM Macs because Windows does not support 16KB pages. Until Microsoft changes this, don’t expect Windows on Apple Silicon.

Update (2020-08-05): Shac Ron (via Ashley Bischoff)::

Recent info indicates that upcoming Mac chips will support 4K pages (a change from iOS-oriented chips), so this will be a non-issue.

1 Comment RSS · Twitter

Harald Striepe

Apparently they do. Qt WebView from 5.x does not work on DTK due to page size, but is just fine on release M1 MacBooks.

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