apple / apple/container

[Request]: Remove unnecessary arm64 kernel HW support (i.e. legacy x86 8250 and friends)

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Swift
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Description

### Feature or enhancement request details

After installing v1.0 container package (container-1.0.0-installer-signed.pkg) and running the demos from WWDC it seems as though there are a number of kernel features / hardware support that are unnecessary.
Initially it looks like, there is no need for 8250 based serial support in the kernel among many others items.

More scrubbing of the kernel config's would be beneficial to the overall speed of booting so we aren't wasting time probing for missing hardware / unsupported virtual components.

After doing a quick disabling of the aforementioned devices from kernel/config-arm64 everything still seems to work as expected. No boot timing measurements (before and after comparisons) have been done as of yet.

### Code of Conduct

- [x] I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Review kernel/config-arm64 and the container package and WWDC demo behavior first. Identify which legacy hardware options are unnecessary for the arm64 environment, then establish before-and-after boot measurements while checking that the demos still work. Done requires an agreed set of removals and evidence that functionality is preserved.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
linux
Domain
operating-systems, performance
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
32/100

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