RME Driverkit vs Kernel drivers

[Morty-C-137]

Sorry to bump this thread. I am still rocking my original RME Babyface. The DriverKit drivers work very well. Rock solid ever since Monterey. The thing I find confusing (and what RME does not seem to communicate anywhere clearly) is that, although they call it the DriverKit driver, the driver itself gets installed in the SystemExtensions folder vs the DriverExtensions folder where you think it would end up going by the naming.

[PAK]

DEXT (Library/SystemExtensions) is the replacement for KEXT. So that folder is for things still requiring access to the kernel, except done via Apple now. Things not requiring that level of control would go to the regular DriverExtensions location.

As the name implies, it’s really meant for extensions to system capabilities. EG A different file system, where it’d require kernel access to maintain performance whilst reading millions of files. Things, which aren’t adding capabilities to the OS, would be expected to use the existing Apple frameworks without requiring their own kernel access.

It would be interesting to hear, from RME, what they’re still doing which they feel requires DEXT. Of course, this is in addition to the existing things Core Audio already does, and the RME .driver file you’ll find in “/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL” (hardware abstraction layer).

[medienhexer]

DEXT (Library/SystemExtensions) is the replacement for KEXT. So that folder is for things still requiring access to the kernel, except done via Apple now. Things not requiring that level of control would go to the regular DriverExtensions location.

As the name implies, it’s really meant for extensions to system capabilities. EG A different file system, where it’d require kernel access to maintain performance whilst reading millions of files. Things, which aren’t adding capabilities to the OS, would be expected to use the existing Apple frameworks without requiring their own kernel access.

It would be interesting to hear, from RME, what they’re still doing which they feel requires DEXT. Of course, this is in addition to the existing things Core Audio already does, and the RME .driver file you’ll find in “/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL” (hardware abstraction layer).

Don‘t they replace the regular USB protocol with their own in order to avoid the typical bus communication issues like interrupts and out of order packets?