Understanding OS X Kernel Internals

jglidell writes "The OS X kernel has been in the news alot this past year, whether it's why its slow, Mach/micro-kernel makes it bad, it's going closed source and what not. Amit Singh has put up a new presentation on the innards of OS X. It does a pretty good job of summing up the OS X kernel architecture, and has some pretty detailed diagrams... for instance they show that there are so many process/threads layers in OS X. So if you are in the mood for doing some OS studying then head over."

Comments

Re:OS X Kernel - Why?

[Fordiman]

"OS virtualization is going to kill off the native OS X software market"

Ahh, and welcome back to another thrilling episode of "doesn't know what the fuck they're on about" theatre!

Honestly. OSV is SLOW compared to native. No one wants slow.

"OS X is slow" claims investigated

[Logic and Reason]

Before anyone starts spouting off again about Mac OS X being "slow by design" or somesuch, read this article by an Apple engineer that investigates those claims.

Re:Profit!

[moro_666]

somebody must have mispelled "book commercial" as "presentation".

there's nothing really new in that presentation, most of slashdotters know this stuff already, the only thing that we didn't know as of yet is that you can mispell "book commercial" in such an interesting way.

you can "troll" or "flamebait" my post, but this is the way that it is.

Ad

[AstrumPreliator]

I looked at the "presentation" and no, it doesn't do a very good job of explaining anything. Maybe combined with an extensive lecture to explain what the hell he's talking about would make it a bit more clear. From what I saw it was basically just enumerating the different components. Then I noticed the second to last slide. It's basically an ad for a book coming out.

Maybe it's just me though. Did anyone else find it extremely enlightening?

Re:huh?

[Ant P.]

It might make more sense in this format, and without the grammar error:

...in the news alot this past year, whether it's:

• why it's slow,
• Mach/micro-kernel makes it bad,
• it's going closed source
• and what not

Re:Where are good internal docs?

[CableModemSniper]

I don't know if this what you are looking for, but: http://rentzsch.com/mach_inject/

Re:Underpowered Little Machine

[ickies]

"I noticed that my system out of the box with 512 of RAM was dog slow when you start loading iPhoto, or any more then 2 apps." You know, for the first several hours of uptime after starting Tiger for the first time, depending on how much data you have, the Spotlight is indexing all your drives in the background and the system is SLOW AS MOLASSES. Like, painfully so. But it speeds back up after it finishes all that initial indexing.

Re:Underpowered Little Machine

[jocknerd]

You also have to remember that the Mac mini has integrated graphics which uses some of the memory. I've heard it uses about 80MB of your memory. But I agree, it needs at least 1GB to run smoothly.

Re:Underpowered Little Machine

[Golias]

Buying RAM for a Mac isnt' what it used to be. If I remember right, before the MacIntels, and such, you had to buy special matched/paired memory kits for upgrades, specially from Apple.

You don't remember right.

I've owned Macs for years, and never once used anything other than cheap third-party memory to upgrade them. The G3 Towers were very picky about memory that was up to spec, but even then there was no need to buy from Apple.

And how, exactly, would you suggest installing "matched/paired memory kits" into the SINGLE SLOT in the G4 version of the Mac mini?

Re:Underpowered Little Machine

[MojoStan]

Not sure why my post was rated funny, but oh well. Karma is karma.

Being modded "Funny" doesn't improve you karma anymore. Your post seems to indicate that you didn't know this, but I'm not sure. Anyhoo, here's the relevant FAQ:

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In addition to moderation, other things factor into karma as well. You can get some karma by submitting a story that we decide to post. Also, metamoderation can cause your karma to change. This encourages good moderators, and ideally removes moderator access from bad ones.

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