RISC OS Porting to the new ARM based Apple MacMini

Ok, I am not being too serious here :)

But hey Apple indeed released one of the most powerful and affordable ARM based Desktop available to date. It’s relatively cheap, so let’s leave a message here for ROOL guys, RISC OS Developments and CJE …

Jokes apart, Who is going to get one? (I definitely will) and do there is any realistic interest into looking for deeper tech details to have a long term porting to it?

P.S. please don’t shoot the pianist (I am a musician so it applies!)

Does it support ARM 32 (or is it 64 bit only)? probably no ARM 32.

Does it support booting any other OS that mac os? probably not, this is Apple after all.

So no, no one is going to be porting to it.

Apple hasn’t released many details yet, but developers should start getting them next week. It’ll be interesting to see what people dig up.

On the current Intel machines you need to change a setting to boot anything other than Mac OS or Windows. It remains to be seen whether the Arm machines are the same way.

It’s Apple’s own design.

Good luck getting sufficient details as to even contemplate starting up an alternative operating system.

Linux will work…

The used Apple A12 is ARMv8.3 (AArch32 and AArch64)…so no issue with 64 Bit only for now…I don’t know if ARM will skip AArch32 with ARMv9. But as Rick and the others said…I would be very surprised if one gets access to relevant information on how to run anything else that their stuff…so we need to rely on some OS hackers ;-) …somebody should ask the Apple CEO if they would do a Raspberry Apple Pi with open source, it even sounds funny :-)

I repeat: the support of Linux/ARM will be present (probably under a VM. With KVM?). Apple confirmed this. So the open source community will have some code to work with. The real problem is “will it support 32bit OSes?”. Probably not.

iOS dropped 32bit support with iOS 11. All the iOS devices that contain A12 processors have shipped with iOS 12 (or newer). I doubt that the CPUs contain any 32bit support.

To be honest, I’m more interested in seeing RISC OS run on this 7,3000,000 core ARM super computer. I think that should be quick enough for most of us for the next few years.

It would be frustrating running at near raspberry pi 4 speeds (2.2Ghz) and having 7,299,999 cores unused. If Fujitsu gets in touch I’ll point them to Jeffrey.

ha ha. Yes, I think some sort of scheduler may be required.

I’d be more concerned about losing Mac Messenger Pro, though I suppose Rosetta 2 might keep it going until Apple abandon it.

Hmm, does this count as porting RISC OS, albeit in reverse :-)

I’d be more concerned about losing Mac Messenger Pro, though I suppose Rosetta 2 might keep it going until Apple abandon it.

I take it a suitable new build wouldn’t be on the cards?

I think that might come into aqualung territory.

(my emphasis)

It would be frustrating running at near raspberry pi 4 speeds (2.2Ghz) and having 7,299,999 cores unused.

PMSL. 😂

I think that might come into aqualung territory.

Is it a significant code change, or just a recompile? The latter seems to be do-able on recent evidence.

I guess that would be a question for Andrew R

I’m more interested in seeing RISC OS run on this 7,3000,000 core ARM super computer.

The USB might be troublesome.

Could the Linux port= run on it?

Turns out it’s not a 7,400,000 core machine. It’s a machine with a lot of processors that have a lot of cores that add up to the magical figure quoted.

How disappointing. I wanted a single slab of silicon with seven and a half million cores on it. What d’you think, maybe a metre and a half square? ;-)

But, alas, it’s reality is more mundane. Think of it as being a very sexed up version of two million Pi3s networked together.

Peter wrote:

Does it support ARM 32 (or is it 64 bit only)? probably no ARM 32.

Time to get working on that ARM64 JIT in RPCEmu :-)

whoa it has got busy in here :)

Also how did the mac-mini went from 8 cores to 7,400,000?!?! loool joking! :)

Does it support ARM 32 (or is it 64 bit only)? probably no ARM 32.

As stated in multiple comments and also on wiki, the Apple A12 ARM cores are fully compliant with ARMv8.3 architecture which indeed supports 32 and 64bit.

The reality is that the CPU is probably the last of the issues here, first off as Rick mentioned, the low level documentation is not easily available, hence right now the only way is to hack the system and find out how all components works, which is a really hard task given that most of them are inside the same chip!

However JIT emulation would be extremely beneficial, also the RISC OS on Linux project would be more feasible if and when the OSS community will be able to have access to the board info and details.

The inspiration for this post came from Apple declaring that they are willing to help open source community, so there may be a chance of documentation on the horizon. However, right now, nothing tangible yet and, knowing Apple, they will want first to get stuff done for their OS and then support alternatives just to sell more HW (because in the end Apple is still an HW company).

I think the fact that a lot of big companies are working on ARM based laptops and even a desktop now in the 64bit incarnation of it is encouraging for the work and choices made by ROOL and others on having RISC OS OSS and also moving to C instead of Assembly etc.

We may not get it straight away, but the fact that new ARM based desktop computers are being built means at least another long set of years for RISC OS to exist as OSS and with volunteers keep working to port it to new platforms, so also if a long term goal, the fact that there will be ARM based full on computers back on our desks is very encouraging and also exciting (IMHO).

As usual just my 0.5c

As stated in multiple comments and also on wiki, the Apple A12 ARM cores are fully compliant with ARMv8.3 architecture which indeed supports 32 and 64bit.

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet!

The ARMv8 Architecture Reference Manual states that AArch32 support is optional (section D1.20.2, “Support for Exception levels and Execution states”). ARM have even released CPUs of their own which are AArch64-only (Cortex-A34, Neoverse E1).

I mean I also don’t find any clear “evidence”, like a talk from apple that they still have any AArch32 support. As Jeffrey said before and what I didn’t know is that they ditched any 32 Bit application support since 2017 (iOS 11). The OS will tell you it doesn’t run as far as I get it (don’t have any Apple device at all)…so I have to agree…why would they waste any silicon on 32 Bit ? Did nobody ever hack those chips to find more information !??? Will they actually allow Linux to run on the dev machine ? I guess then it can be found out somehow…

I found those links:
Apple A10 => A32 support
Apple A11 => only A64
Apple A12 => only A64
Apple A13 => only A64
…that could fit from the timeline…but no idea where they got the info from…

Does it support ARM 32 (or is it 64 bit only)? probably no ARM 32.

I noticed last month that Microsoft are discontinuing 32 bit Windows. Pff. No sooner than we got over 26 bit (with 32 bit introduced mid 90’s) and it’s time to add a load more bits!