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XNU

XNU ("X is Not Unix") is the computer operating system (OS) kernel developed at Apple Inc. since December 1996 for use in the Mac OS X (now macOS) operating system and released as free and open-source software as part of the Darwin OS, which, in addition to being the basis for macOS, is also the basis for iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS.

Key facts

OS.name: XNU
OS.screenshot: The XNU Kernel Graphic.svg
OS.caption: The XNU kernel
OS.developer: Apple Inc.
OS.family: Unix-like, Unix
OS.working state: Current
OS.source model: Open-source
OS.programmed in: C, C++, assembly language
OS.supported_platforms: Current: x86-64, 64-bit ARM, 32-bit ARM (32-bit ARM support is closed-source)Historical: PowerPC (32-bit and 64-bit), IA-32
OS.kernel type: Hybrid
OS.license: Apple Public Source License 2.0
OS.preceded by: Mach, Nukernel, NeXTSTEP kernel

via Wikipedia infobox

Article

8 sections

Contents

Kernel design
Mach
BSD
K32/K64
IOKit
See also
References
External links

XNU was originally developed by NeXT for the NeXTSTEP operating system. It was a hybrid kernel derived from version 2.5 of the Mach kernel, developed at Carnegie Mellon University, which incorporated the bulk of the 4.3BSD kernel modified to run atop Mach primitives, along with an application programming interface (API) in Objective-C for writing drivers named DriverKit.