MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Way over my head. This whole article is stuck in the wall right behind the top of my pointy little cranium. Ouch.

this article made no sense to me.......

whatever.....

That's hyperinteresting!

I think I'm going to wait until Apple successfully implement the Flux Capacitor into OS X 10.7. Time travel will then be a possibility for all Mac Users, allowing you the ability to travel forward to 2030 and see the unveiling of the long awaited competitor to OS X 10.4 - Microsoft Vista.

It sure is nice to have something loaded "atomically". Whatever that means.

i like beans

" From a hypervisor, it's a far shorter and safer leap to running multiple simultaneous OS instances without the necessity for, or with diminished need of, software host/guest virtualization."

Running Windows apps without running Windows or emulation.

Sounds hyper-good to me.

I'm hyperventilating

breathe....read....breathe....read....breathe....okay, that's better...

You don't know the history of hypervisors.I do.

Holy Hyper API Batman, they are taking the Mac out of a Leopard....or is that mach? I am so confused......

I don't understand it either, I'm a hardware

guy. Maybe one of you coneheads out there could

translate. Of course, that's the point of Mac, I

just turn it on and use it.

MW - far: far beyond my realm of understanding

This is exactly what I've been suggesting that Apple is up to - to all those trolls and tech writers (admittedly, sometimes it's hard to tell them apart) who've been saying that Apple was going to "dump" the Mach kernel in favor of the Windows kernel!

HA! If there's any Windows API functions, they'll be in addition to a re-written or completely new kernel that runs your Mac like a Mac. Dream on, turd-suckers. This is very exciting, even if I don't understand the full implications of it all. But this certainly fits in the "Boot Camp" integration model, now, doesn't it?

hypervisor's too slow!
prepare to go directly to .... LUDICROUSVISOR!

Hypervisor. Is that the supervisor's boss, and will my Wacom tablet still work?

this is so snoooooozeville.
even mdn had to look up in the dictionary what the guy is talking about.

Firstly this is unrelated to Boot Camp. This is Parallels. If you have an Intel Mac, you can check it out. Nearly everyone here has run VirtualPC or something like it for PPC. A hypervisor controls who has hardware resources at any given time.

In Parallels, as I have gleaned, a hypervisor is loaded in the kernel and allows Parallels through Mac OS X to give Windows (or whatever OS you run in Parallels) access to hardware resources. Some resources are not directly available. The Intel Core processors have hardware virtualization, which supports the hypervisor directly. These things were designed to work together.

This DOES NOT replace the operating system. From what I've seen, at least one OS must be in control, but the guest OSes can consume resources even when the primary OS is under heavy load.

One limitation that I've seen is that GPUs (graphics processors) do not support hardware virtualization. There's been no need until now. That means the host OS (Mac OS X in this case) can do 3D games while in hypervisor mode, but the guest OS (Windows, etc) cannot.

Boot Camp will allow Windows XP SP2 to boot and run 3D apps without these limitations. Boot Camp is a work-around for this limitation. It is a critical limitation for some, but not others. I was able to run Google's Sketchup 3D app for instance using Parallels, but it ran smoother in Boot Camp. There should also be many more rendering options under Boot Camp, but I didn't explore those.

So we have two solutions: 1) hypervisors will allow multiple OSes to run in concert, but only the host OS has full control of the resources. 2) Boot Camp allows OSes that support Apple's EFI-BIOS bridge on x86 to have full control of the hardware.

I hope that helps explain it.

This will not let Windows apps be run inside Mac OS X Leopard a-la Classic mode. Other technology will have to allow that, but it would be part of the puzzle.

Boot Camp is something else entirely. Perhaps Boot Camp is designed as a trojan horse, or a tool to get MS to support EFI, or perhaps it was to show that Apple engineers can do what Microsoft said it could not.

I don't think that the article implies that Apple will be using Windows APIs. What it does move the world toward is a piece of hardware that, among other things, might be able to run multiple OSes at the same time - not emulating but actually running. On this point I'm ambivalent, I just don't want to see any furthering of the use of Windows at all period anywhere anytime, especially not on Macs.

But more to the point, this article indicates the possibility of running applications built for other OSes inside of OS X, or whatever new OS technology Apple comes up with - Now that would not only be useful for those who prefer to use OS X, but have to run Windows to get specific tasks done because nothing is written for OS X for that specific task, yet. This maneuver could deal the single biggest blow to MS Windows in the history of personal computing - And looking way down the road, could set Apple up as the provider of all computing hardware because it would be able to run everything under its own OS.

How about a hyper-stop-that-damn-beachball-appearing-so-much to speed up my machine and cut out some of the needless time wasting by OS X. Apparently, there is a way of running Unix a bit more efficiently that would mean the beachball would never appear and it is supposedly not too difficult to implement. Any of you propellerheads out there care to explain it and suggest why Apple has not adopted it so far?

NO WINDOWS APPS ARE COMING NEAR MY MAC

..whether they are in a hypervisationatory state or not.

They can stay in the swamp where they belong thank you.

The stories to date that I"ve read regarding the replacement of the Mach kernel have focused on speed. The consensus is that there are other kernels that can improve the performance of the basic OS.

A hypervisor is a method that allows you to "carve up" your hardware to create virtual servers. For example, I've got several dozen IBM pSeries Squadrons (64 cpu, 128 GB RAM) at work which we virtualize into any hardware configuration we want. I.e. you could make 64 virtual AIX servers all running on the same box (or 2 32-way or 1 64-way, or 1 32-way, 1 10-way, 5 4-way, etc). With AIX 5.3 you can even hot-allocate fractions of CPUs to other virtual servers when necessary. In short, it rocks.

Probably its stuff like this that caused Avie to leave.

Thanks Noraa, your explanation was better written than the article.

OK ... I understood nearly ALL the words in that piece, even before I started reading it. My understanding of some shifted based on context, but that still means ... huh?

Now ... this guy is getting the word out through what would seem to be a reliable source and he managed to write over my technically astute head without saying anything that suggested it was gibberish, but WAS it gibberish? Leopard has been out there in Beta, hasn't it? Wouldn't someone have noticed such a huge "core" change already? He's talking "speculation", here. That's a fancy word for "rumor". If Mach is in Leopard now, it will be in Leopard at show-time. If not, why the "speculation"?

Yes, this sort of technology will be coming to a Mac near you "sometime soon", but that may be 10.7 rather than Leopard.

O.K., let's break it down.

Hy - hello; a greeting

pervi - from perverted; away from the norm or Norm.

sor - to ache; to cause mild pain possibly from inflammation


So, let's review. Hypervisor translates to "Hello, you weirdo freak. Stop touching yourself. You're annoying and painful to be around."

Now I understand why programmers don't like to explain their work.

Noraa, you do know the history of hypervisors. I don't.

Having a hypervisor just means the flimflam of your jujam matches the razmatas of your sassafrass.

Or something like that.

Totally lost.

I think you it's the other way around, OpJ.

MW: nearly

Opj: You might want to consider upgrading to Jujam 2.4.1. Lots of bug fixes.

I'm having a difficult time seeing the "advantages" to running multiple OS's on a "personal" computer. This sounds like something only .00000000000000000000001 percent of the computer-using population would give a rat's ass about. And I may be overestimating.

And don't feel bad, OpJ. I used to think that jujam was what happened when my family tried to harmonize those fun Passover songs.

Yes. They're dumping Mach. Steve only likes tomorrow...not yesterday.

Who comes up with these way out, 'Da Vinci Code-like' names for new tech?

The name is more confusing than the concept.

t sure is nice to have something loaded "atomically". Whatever that means.

Loading something atomically is just like writing something atomically, only in the other direction. Hope that clears things up for you.

Ampar,

Don't feel bad. I thought jujam was what got spread on that fun unleavened Passover bread.

It's all very simple. Hyperinteresting creates a takion field to reverse the plasma coils generating a static warp bubble thus slowing gravitation velocities and their particles passing through parallel temporal anomalies.

Rather basic stuff, it's all covered in the first chapter of the Cochran principle.

I hope that you won't have to ask OS X to force quit an app. I don't like that in Windows.

Noraa,

Very nice explanation. Thanks!

Brings an idea to mind. There have been complaints that Mach is not monolithic and is not as suited to server applications and Linux. Perhaps the hypervisor can allow a monolithic instance of OS X to run? Maybe just Linus instead? Perhaps an easier way to get around this issue without having to ditch what's come before? Wonder if we'll see Classic run in a whole new way?

I now understand more clearly why MS may not want to support VPC any further.

Endless possibilities!

norraa... as adept at parsing the deep technology as s/he is at handling the poli-flamethrower... a virtual hottie if ever there was.

I was looking for information regarding running two version of mklinux on a machine in mklinux journal entry, but could not find it. This was closest thing I found was a quote. The article with the quote is dated 1/26/1999.

http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-traffic/kt19990204_4.html

"Perhaps I'm missing something here, but why not use MkLinux? It's Linux hosted atop the Mach microkernel. IIRC, you can run two Linux "servers" on top of Mach simulatenously, and use one of them to debug the other."



Mach kernel already supports hyper**** (in Mach speak, multiple servers). If I remeber the old description of Rhapsody correctly, OSX is already is running multiple servers.

MacPinchi: LOL! Lotsa Matzoh for everyone! Try horseradish.

my cat's breath smells like cat food!

Thorin,

Maybe one of you coneheads out there could translate.

I'm no conehead, but here goes:

Hypervisor is one of those new buzz-word technologies that comes a long every so often. Anything with "hyper" in it's name is a good tip-off.

Like the micro kernel of a decade ago, it's supposed to make our computers infinitely more powerful and secure, it'll enable us to do everything better than ever before, and it'll open our digital world to endless new possibilities. Yadda yadda yadda.

As long as it works (and does a superior job), I don't care what the Mac OS guts look like.

So, it's an OS component with ADD. If it has to be medicated, don't tell Tom Cruise.

Uhhhhh.....I hate to burst anyones bubble about virtualization within Leopard, but, this article has everything to do with OS security than it does with the virtualizing of different OS's

Example [1]:
"Working from a set of policies set by the administrator, a hypervisor can transparently allow, refuse or reroute privileged operations. The hypervisor alone has the authority to manage CPU privilege levels. In a system with a hypervisor, with each system power-up or reset, a signed OS boot loader or hypervisor is located, validated and loaded atomically, meaning that there's no opportunity to subvert the process."

Example [2]:
"If Apple stays true to the Mach API, which is extremely simple, Leopard can boot to an inviolably (never to be hacked) trustworthy, policy-controlled environment with no changes even to device drivers and the BSD kernel."

Example [3]:
"Apple's use of the TPM (Trusted Platform Module - a chip. And yes, this does have to do with trusted computing as it is part of the spec for it) is worth a separate blog entry, so I'll give it one tonight. Just know that you can't implement a proper hypervisor without a TPM or something like it."

Read his next Blog entry when it comes out - I guarantee you it will bring this current blog entry into focus - IT'S ABOUT SECURITY, NOT VIRTUALIZATION.

Read the first page of this and the TPM will be more clear:
content.gateway.com/www.gateway.com/pdf/tpm.pdf

One final example from the article:

Example [4]:
" I know that Microsoft is scrambling to build a hypervisor into Longhorn Server. I know that OSes need hypervisors to keep them secure and to give administrators a single, trusted, low-level interface for the granting of access rights and the allocation of resources."

Again this is an article about security NOT virtualization. Where it got picked up I don't know.

I'm no OS designer, but it is pretty clear to me that a hypervisor is a layer of indirection between the hardware and the OS. Developers usually add layers of indirection to allow flexibility, and/or implement features that would otherwise have to be implemented many times over. Performance is usually unaffected, but flexibility and development agility is usually increased.

oh and Dirty Pierre le Punk. I think you're barking up the wrong tree. There is no panacea for what could be a multitude of system performance issues. One place to look is your RAM and ask yourself is there enough? Otherwise you have to look at what it is that you're asking the system to do. In reporting issues to anyone, like this forum, for example, it is best to be specific. For example, do you find that the hard drive light is constantly flashing while the beach ball is appearing, what operations are you performing at the time, what are your system specs, and so on. You will find help much more readily available

"There's some milk in the fridge, and it's about to go bad...

...And there it goes."

--Bobby Hill

"c" has got it right. As with everything else related to the Intel CPU/TPM transition, the primary reason for this has to do with locking down computers, rather than running multiple OS's, or software designed for other OS's. However, I'm sure Apple will make some use of the latter. In fact, since I can't see Jobs wanting any version of Windows (or any other OS) to run on Macs as a long term policy, my bet would be that Apple will focus their efforts on having the various 'foreign' software apps themselves running in an OSX environment.

The ironic thing is that moving to x86 actually made virtualization ala a Hypervisor more difficult. If you read the Wikipedia on this that MDN links to at the bottom, it says it in black & white. The problem is the x86 instruction set is so complex that, even if Apple goes this route with the Macintels, there will be a performance hit that otherwise would not have existed had they stayed with PPC. In otherwords, they could've had all the gain & none of the pain.

It's hysterical how, the more you know about the technology, the less this transition makes sense from a technological standpoint!

Apple+Intel=crap

I highly doubt Leopard will include virtualization technology. If someone loads Parallels, and it for whatever reason kills their system, Apple gets to say "hey, you installed third party software...tough crap." If they have a built in virtualization solution and it kills/corrupts the Mac side, people are going to be calling them and demanding new machines. That can get expensive.