Rosetta 2 and the Architecture of Apple Silicon

Back in 2006, Apple shipped Rosetta — a binary translation layer that let PowerPC apps run on Intel Macs. It was slow. It was imperfect. And it bought them just enough time to pull off one of the most successful architecture transitions in computing history.

Fourteen years later, they’re doing it again.

At WWDC in June, Apple announced the transition from Intel to their own ARM-based silicon. The M1 chip. And alongside it, Rosetta 2.