Apple M1 Patches For The Linux Kernel Sent Out A Third Time

Hector Martin, who has been working on the crowd-funded effort to bring Linux up on the Apple M1 SoC and the modern Apple devices using that in-house silicon, has sent out the third iteration of his kernel patches.

With the "v3" patches sent out today the focus remains on getting the Apple M1 SoC brought up under the Linux kernel with interrupt handling, SMP support, UART, a SimpleFB-based frame-buffer, and the DeviceTree needed for the Mac Mini and other new Macs using the M1 chip. There still is much work ahead to make the Apple M1 and the modern Macs usable on a day-to-day basis, especially if wanting accelerated graphics and making use of other capabilities of this complex ARM-based chip.

With the v3 patches, FIQ support was removed as it's going through a separate patch series, an nVHE workaround added, and a number of other low-level code changes as a result of code review feedback and the continued reverse engineering work that is going on by Hector and others for supporting Apple Silicon on Linux. The v3 patches need to be applied against a Linux 5.12 Git based kernel.

The v3 Apple M1 patches remain under a "request for testing" flag with those adventurous testers being sought for helping to vet the support. The patches and more details via the kernel mailing list.