“Speculation is rampant that Mach, which is a component of the OS X kernel, will be axed from OS X 10.5 Leopard,” Tom Yager writes for InfoWorld. “I don’t ponder whether Mach will survive in Leopard. I see Mach as a placeholder for a hypervisor. 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.”
Yager writes, “The Mach API (application programming interface) could create a painless path to a potent and extremely secure hypervisor foundation for Apple’s OS. OS X’s privileged code already puts Mach in charge of physical resources and sets up a sort of mailbox infrastructure for passing commands and data in and out of Mach. If Apple stays true to the Mach API, which is extremely simple, Leopard can boot to an inviolably trustworthy, policy-controlled environment with no changes even to device drivers and the BSD kernel. 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.”
“Is a hypervisor part of an OS’s kernel? Can’t you boot a monolithic OS on a hypervisor and still say you have a monolithic OS kernel? If such questions are important to you, I’ll leave it to you to work them out. 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. Mach, the Mac’s TPM and the Intel virtualization extensions give Apple a huge head-start on a hypervised OS.”
Full article with much more – best read in full – here.
MacDailyNews Note: A hypervisor in computing is a scheme which allows multiple operating systems to run, unmodified, on a host computer at the same time. More info here.
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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
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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.