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

Profit!

[snutte]

1. Make presentation and push for own book about subject
2. get /.'ed
3. profit!

In Starbucks

[Anonymous Coward]

nobody notices how slow your black Macbook is.

OS X Kernel - Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is looking to drop the burden of having to support their own niche OS as quickly as possible.

After getting the boot from IBM, Apple is the sole x86 OEM saddled with the tremendous expense of funding the research, development and support of an entire OS all on their own. Intel Mac sales have been no better than previous Macs - and with the massive heat and other problems the new Intel Macs are having sales could get much worse.

Apple will most likely sell of the good bits of OS X to Microsoft fairly soon as OS virtualization is going to kill off the native OS X software market. Reading up on OS X might be of historical interest, but for most people it will be of almost zero practical use soon.

Re:OS X Kernel - Why?

[Fordiman]

It does not break down. A system at 90% is just as annoying as a video at 90%. I paid for full speed, I want full speed.

"As the mac-buying public has no problem with rosetta slow downs on intel hardware, I imagine they wouldn't have any problems with other slow downs due to emulation layers."

The mac-buying public has no problem with getting less than what they paid for? No... Surely not...

No seriously, I'm well aware of the masses of emu layers Macs *presently* have, as well as all the stupid pissing contests about Windows' legacy software support - when both systems have the same problem.

No, seriously; the mac-PC split in my mind is one of usability versus cost and software availability, and since for me, usability is a nonentity, you know where my dollars lay. I don't hate Apple (though their marketing humans ALL need shot in the face with the largest weapon handy), but I can't justify overpaying for their stuff.

Now you want me to overpay for my computer to support multiple OSes at a performance hit - to what end? So I can run software I've never needed before? Oh Goody Goody Gumdrops.

So yeah. My point is that Virtualization will not destroy the native OS market. Not a chance in hades. Too many performance hounds like myself in the work to cause native to fail to be profitable.

Oh, and if you think that virtualized performance will match native in the future: well, it's possible, but don't think commercial marketing is going to let anyone know; it's in their interests to have there be a compromise in existence so that they can sell you two separate products. And they wouldn't be able to fool you or I, but they absolutely would be able to fool a significant enough chunk of the masses.

The Dude Abides

[bariswheel]

Wowzers....1900 pages uh uh uh uh uh...compllekks! - Jeff Lebowski

Comic indeed

[PookieToo]

Ummm, lets see, since its a Mac it would be COMIC SANS! What do the Windows people call it?...

Re:Underpowered Little Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple loosers.

Picasa + firefox on windows xp tweaked runs much better with 512 of ram than iphoto + safari. OSX is a shitload of bloat and vista will be the same :(