Do you think you can rosetta drivers?

[BootLoxes]

I have an art tablet that I would like to use with the apple silicon MBP when they come out. I am expecting to have to rosetta my software since all of them confirment no apple silicon versions at launch. I am not worried about that but I am more worried about being able to use my drawing tablet. Without it then my software would be useless.

Do you think rosetta is for programs only or will drivers for peripherals work too?

 

[Ritsuka]

Drivers implemented with the new DriverKit framework introduced in 10.15 will run thru rosetta. Kext (Kernel Extensions) will need to be recompiled.

 

[markiv810]

For Printers and Scanners, Apple should not have issues, in short all the peripheral hardwares that are able to work well with iOS devices should not have any issues (theoretically).

 

[dmccloud]

Not all drivers will be able to utilize Rosetta for cross-platform translation, especially older drivers that still rely on kexts as has been already stated in this thread. I would recommend checking with the manufacturer of your drawing tablet to see if they are even planning to release updated drivers for ARM. I'd assume Wacom would be all over it given how much of their user base is on a Mac. If you have a tablet from another company, then it may be a completely different story.

 

[BootLoxes]

Not all drivers will be able to utilize Rosetta for cross-platform translation, especially older drivers that still rely on kexts as has been already stated in this thread. I would recommend checking with the manufacturer of your drawing tablet to see if they are even planning to release updated drivers for ARM. I'd assume Wacom would be all over it given how much of their user base is on a Mac. If you have a tablet from another company, then it may be a completely different story.

This is what I am worried about. I use an XP-Pen tablet thats a pretty recent model. I am just not sure how their drivers will work and I really do not want to have to pay 4x the price for a Wacom that does the exact same thing my current tablet does.

 

[deconstruct60]

Drivers implemented with the new DriverKit framework introduced in 10.15 will run thru rosetta. Kext (Kernel Extensions) will need to be recompiled.

I'm not sure the new driver frameworks with Rosetta 2.

"...In Rosetta, the entire process is always translated. You cannot load native code into a translated process or vice versa. You also cannot use Rosetta for kernel extensions, AVX vector instructions, or virtualization. Xcode fully supports building and running apps for Rosetta. "

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The new systems extensions have two components to them. There is an application in the bundle, but the actual 'driver' component runs in an "in between" state between a regular , generic application level process and and something with kernel privileges. They get a special iOMMU mapping. The special IOMMU mapping is a related form of virtualization. And some memory is shared with the kernel ( cross matching plug-ins into a shared process space doesn't work so well ).

The old style kernel extensions are definitely out. Not like there is a huge number of long lived legacy System Extensions that proceeded the transition anyway. If someone has recently complete overhauled the driver for System extensions then are they going to be that far away from putting in work to build a fat binary ?

There are definitely elements where Rosetta 2 is a distinct separate path than what Transitive implemented ( the first Rosetta tech. )