Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.3

In the latest Asahi Linux progress report, several significant developments have been made. Upstreaming work has continued, with two major drivers – macaudio and avd – making it onto the list. The macaudio driver, which is crucial for audio support on Apple Silicon devices, has faced challenges due to the unique nature of the audio subsystem and the use of special speaker and headset amplifiers by Apple. The team has worked on modifying core ALSA changes and drivers to support this.

AVD driver, which has made impressive progress in a short period, is also included in this cycle. This driver, responsible for handling various SoC components, has already been in the downstream tree for just three months and is now on the list. The development of initial Devicetrees for M4 Pro, Max devices, and M5 has also been a notable achievement, thanks to the tireless efforts of Yureka. These initial Devicetrees are basic, capable of booting the SoC to a TTY, and further enablement is ongoing.

The team has shifted towards an upstream-first approach where applicable, with changes to the TI USB-PD and SPMI drivers for new devices and initial support for Thunderbolt being developed upstream-first. M3 series machines now have generally available support, with DCP enabled for improved performance and battery life. Additionally, virtualizing SPTM-enabled versions of macOS in m1n1 has been achieved, enabling reverse engineering on M4 series machines.

The team plans to extend this to M5 series SoCs, where macOS uses Exclaves for sensitive tasks. With the Secure Kernel and Exclaves running in separate VMs under m1n1, the team has successfully virtualized and reverse engineered macOS on both M4 and M5 series machines. This progress includes initializing the M3 GPU and drawing a triangle, although Apple's GPU choices present significant engineering challenges for upstream Mesa integration.