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Mac OS X's HAL
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: Allston, MA, USA
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Unlike so many people in the press, I have no knowledge of any moves Apple may or may not be making today. My question is given the hardware abstraction layer in Mac OS X, how much does any chip in the hardware matter to the software? If software is written to a HAL, wouldn't a processor transition be seamless?
I'm not talking performance, because obviously the OS (or the HAL) would have to be tuned for what's below, but shouldn't things just continue to work?
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-- Jason
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: London
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I thought you were talking about AI 
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Moderator  Join Date: May 2001
Location: Hilbert space
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Yes and no.
All apps that use common Apple APIs and that do not directly access hardware or hardware-specific things (like AltiVec), then it is possible to easily recompile the app. That's pure theory here. All APIs need to be ported, as well as anything that directly access hardware.
Also, x86-64 (the 64 bit extension of the x86 architecture) does not run parallel to x86-32 (so you can't mix code as you like), but you'd have to run exclusively in 64 bit mode. (That's why Windows 64 took such a long time and there are very few drivers out there.) If I may extrapolate from the experience of the Wintel world, drivers will be a huge problem. What printer manufacturer wants to touch a 5-year old printer driver?
If all these obstacles are overcome, you can do it. And MacOS X is very portable (the core OS already runs on x86).
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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
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Mac Elite
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It depends on the code.... obviously anything written in JAVA is extremely portable.... for the most part completely.
(
Last edited by Tyre MacAdmin; Jun 6, 2005 at 11:50 AM.
Reason: grammar)
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Moderator Join Date: May 2001
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Personally, I think the biggest obstacle would be to port everything to 64 bit (Aqua, Quartz, etc.). But I guess we'll find out soon enough.
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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jan 2002
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MacBook Pro
Mac Mini
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Hardware Abstraction Layer
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Moderator Join Date: May 2001
Location: Hilbert space
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Hardware Abstraction Layer. But it doesn't have a lot to do with portability onto another platform.
(
Last edited by OreoCookie; Jun 6, 2005 at 03:06 PM.
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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
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Forum Regular
Join Date: May 2002
Location: MA
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"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over."
"I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."
"Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?"
"Are you sure you are making the right decision?"
"You're going to find that rather difficult."
"Dave...my mind is going...I can feel it...I can feel it."
"Daisy, Daisy..."
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Columbus, OH
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Originally Posted by yticolev
"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over."
"I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."
"Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?"
"Are you sure you are making the right decision?"
"You're going to find that rather difficult."
"Dave...my mind is going...I can feel it...I can feel it."
"Daisy, Daisy..."
HAL = I-1,B-1,M-1
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Mar 2005
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Originally Posted by yticolev
"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over."
"I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."
"Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?"
"Are you sure you are making the right decision?"
"You're going to find that rather difficult."
"Dave...my mind is going...I can feel it...I can feel it."
"Daisy, Daisy..."
That is the first thing I thought of when I saw that thread title too!
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"Mac Daddy" - 15" MBP, 2.2 GHz Core i7, 8GB, 750GB HDD
"Mommy Mac" - 13" Macbook, 2.4GHz C2D, 2GB, 160GB
"Baby Mac" - 15" PB, 1.5GHz, 1.5GB, 80GB
64GB iPod Touch (4th gen)
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