Could x86-64 emulation be possible on ARM Macs?

[maflynn]

I don't agree with this.

ok

The days of '100% Apple' have been long over at Apple

Nope, you're wrong. If Apple was as open as you say they would let you boot into another OS but that's a big nope
Apple's ARM switch will be the end of Boot Camp


Then, on John Gruber's WWDC Talk Show, Craig Federighi confirmed that Apple would not support Boot Camp on ARM Macs:

"We're not direct booting an alternate operating system. Purely virtualization is the route. These hypervisors can be very efficient, so the need to direct boot shouldn't really be the concern."

Its clear Apple wants you to be on apple, using only apple products. They'll begrudgingly allow virtualization and run stuff, but if they can lock down a specific feature they will, such as not permitting people to install an operating system of their choosing.

Apple wants its mac to be the hub of all its pro users do

no argument

High end pro users pay more, and their computers are higher profit margin for Apple too

Some are willing, and Apple sees that willingness, hence the gouging with $1,000 monitor stand that doesn't even swivel, wheels that cost 700 dollars and cables the will run you over a hundred. Apple is definitely loving people who are willing to blindly put up that sort of money. They're laughing all the way to the bank

 

[DearthnVader]

Rosetta will not support virtualization using x86-64. And people are talking about it. But could x86-64 emulation be possible?

Yes, it can be done....

 

[donawalt]

Nope, you're wrong. If Apple was as open as you say they would let you boot into another OS but that's a big nope
Apple's ARM switch will be the end of Boot Camp

If virtualization runs well enough you don't need to boot into a Boot Camp. I haven't used Boot Camp for years yet I use Parallels VMs, full screen, every day. I think you are making assumptions on implementation for a solution none of us know a thing about. We can each have different beliefs on Apple's desires, no one knows. But ***IF*** they desire to continue to court power users in the enterprise as I think they do, then their expertise in design, software, hardware, silicon, and partners makes the assumption that no solution is possible rather unsound. If they don't care about this market as you think, then of course we will see no usable solution.

 

[maflynn]

If virtualization runs well enough you don't need to boot into a Boot Camp

For you, maybe some people wants to run Linux on their computers, natively. Shouldn't the choice what OS be left to the consumer?

We can each have different beliefs on Apple's

Indeed

 

[donawalt]

For you, maybe some people wants to run Linux on their computers, natively. Shouldn't the choice what OS be left to the consumer?

Absolutely - when you know what your choices are. Patience.

 

[leman]

For you, maybe some people wants to run Linux on their computers, natively. Shouldn't the choice what OS be left to the consumer?

I think it's fine to restrict the choice as long at it is clearly communicated to the customer at the moment of purchase.

The question of choice aside, I don't really see a practical application of running Linux natively on a Mac machine beyond "I want to do this" — virtually all development use cases are covered by virtualization. Not to mention that opening up the new Mac to other OS might be far from trivial — it is a custom hardware platform that would require low-level drivers, interfaces, boot loaders etc...

There are a lot of people running Windows on Mac, mostly for gaming, and these people will be hit the most. But you wouldn't be able to run x86 Windows (the one people care about) on an ARM Mac anyway, so third-party OS restrictions don't play any additional role here.

 

[LogicalVue]

Perhaps it is another opportunity for the Mac Pro. In theory, there could be an add-on "MPX" x86 card that is used in some way to execute Windows virtually in somehow. I seem to recall Apple had cards to do this for Apple II and DOS/x86 back in the old, old (early 90s?) days.

As a cross-platform software developer, I will no doubt miss the ease of virtualizing other x86 operating systems. But the reality is, for me anyway, I have an actual PC and a KVM and just switch to it when I need to do Windows stuff. For those wanting to run it all on one laptop while on the go, a comparable workflow is not as easy. Perhaps Windows in the cloud with Remote Desktop would be an option.

 

[Nugget]

If Apple was as open as you say they would let you boot into another OS but that's a big nope.

Its clear Apple wants you to be on apple, using only apple products. They'll begrudgingly allow virtualization and run stuff, but if they can lock down a specific feature they will, such as not permitting people to install an operating system of their choosing.

You’re right and you’re wrong, and you’re inserting your own bias in your analysis above. The elimination of boot camp in favor of virtualization is an acknowledgment of the fact that virtualization is far, far more practical today than it was when Apple first launched boot camp. They aren’t “begrudgingly” allowing virtualization, they’re just accommodating the reality that outside of gaming there’s no real need or utility in direct-booting alternate operating systems with modern virtualization-assist CPUs. You are mistakenly interpreting this as Apple’s hostility to open platforms and user freedom, but it really isn’t. There’s no real performance or usability downside for professional users using virtualization these days.

Also, there’s a huge chasm of difference between “not permitting” and “not enabling.” The loss of Boot Camp doesn’t really tell us anything at all about how difficult it will be to boot Linux natively on an ARM macOS machine. I think Apple just rightly recognize that a vanishingly small number of their customers will ever care to do it and they don’t want to waste their energy continuing to support a Boot Camp dual boot product and device drivers for such a niche endeavor. Especially since virtualization is so effective. And, candidly, because Linux for ARM isn’t really a platform that people even care about these days. Maybe in 5 years, but in the near future? It’s an irrelevant platform in this context.

 

[nikhsub1]

I would argue however that outside of a few niche users, its not really required for the ARM Macs to succeed. Some will whine about it, but most stuff is either running in docker, the web, a cloud server or cross platform these days.

And I would argue there are a lot of folks who switched to apple once virtualization/bootcamp became available. I am a sys admin of windows networks so i need that - i was able to use a MBP as my main machine starting in 2007. It has allowed me to VM many different OSes etc. To say that there are just a few and it is a super niche is just wrong IMO. I don't need bootcamp, but I need LOCAL vm's, I can't rely on cloud for this. Ultimately I may have to get a windows machine to do these things but I'd rather not have to.

I really thought apple would offer an x86 side CPU for precisely this reason - as an option not standard and maybe they will, who knows?

 

[bryce13950]

I hope that Apple will open source rosetta 2 once it officially drops support for it within their OS. If they do that then a lot of these issues will be a lot simpler.

 

[theluggage]

Rosetta will not support virtualization using x86-64.

AFAIK what Apple said is that Rosetta doesn't work with "Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms,"

I.e. you won't be able to take the existing x86 version of Parallels/Fusion/VirtualBox, run it using Rosetta2 and make an x86 virtual machine - which is not remotely surprising since virtualization apps do have to interact with the CPU at a fairly low level, and will have to be substantially re-written to work with ARM ..and then, all you get you'll is a Virtual Machine app that virtualizes ARM64 computer platforms.

None of which means that a new 2020 incarnation of an x86 emulator couldn't or wouldn't take advantage of Rosetta-like translation technology (which might also help with Intel/AMD patents) to provide far better performance than you may remember from SoftWindows back in the day. You can already run x86 OSs on ARM with QEMU (anybody know whether that uses code translation or emulation?)

 

[theluggage]

For you, maybe some people wants to run Linux on their computers, natively. Shouldn't the choice what OS be left to the consumer?

You assume that - but for Apple's cruel intransigence - ARM Linux or ARM Windows 10 would be capable of running out-of-the-box on an ARM Mac.

There's more to a computing platform that the CPU instructiuon set architecture. ARM Linux supports a range of ARM server and development boards (and the Raspberry Pi) which seem to be slowly converging on standard architectures, but I don't think there's "one-architecture-to-rule-them-all" just yet. Last time I looked, Win 10 for ARM was only available to OEMs building their own ARM hardware and, presumably, tweaked individually for that machine's architecture.

Apple wouldn't just have to allow other operating systems to run directly - they'd have to make and maintain Windows and Linux drivers available for their GPUs, SSD controllers and other functions that will be taken over by the SoC... and update them every time they wanted to roll out another SoC design. That would be jolly decent of them - but not really an obligation, and a non-trivial amount of work when, for most cases, Virtualization - with the hypervisor simulating a range of "standard" platforms - is the more effective solution.

They haven't said they're going to block alternative OSs - and they're going to allow you to turn off secure boot - so if any OS makers can find away around the driver issues then alternatives may appear. It's not as if they've ever supported any alternative OSs beyond whatever recent version of Windows BootCamp supports.

 

[Amethyst1]

Last time I looked, Win 10 for ARM was only available to OEMs building their own ARM hardware and, presumably, tweaked individually for that machine's architecture

Not to contradict you - but it's possible to get your hands on a Windows 10 for ARM ISO and run it in QEMU, which presumably is as generic a machine as it gets. It's slow as heck (at least on my host) but it runs.

 

[dogslobber]

Highly likely - a port of QEMU would be sufficient for that to happen. The big question is - how fast will it be?

Qemu is 5-10x slower running x86_64 via emulation than using virtualization based on my experience. If Apple had a very performant number of cores then it might not be too bad for less threaded apps. But something like a browser kills performance so I'd say it would be focused on a specific class of app such as non-graphical.
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A lot of things are possible. Emulation is relatively simple, but it’s unlikely to be useable. Virtual machines could theoretically use their own transpiler from x86 to ARM - similar to what Rosetta does (there are open source libraries that do this). What also might be quite feasible is to leverage Rosetta to run x86 applications in a virtualized environment.

You'd need something in the emulator to do this but it's a crap shoot given so many processes run. The closest you could get is a JIT compiled version of the app running through some type of equivalent WINE layer. But that just seems untenable.
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I think you'll see a surge of games on the Mac when it shares hardware with the iPad/iPhone/appleTV.

And I don't just mean crappy mobile games. Controller support is now a thing and the market will grow now the Mac is onboard.

I mean as a developer you can target hundreds of millions of iOS devices AND the Mac market now. Thats a far more massive user base than any console or even the PC market for what is now mostly shared effort for all of the above platforms.

I doubt it will lead to much more than a fullscreen iPad version for the first few years. There are no ARM Macs out there right now and tens of millions of Intel Macs.
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And I believe Parallels etc. works similarly. They insert traps or otherwise catch some system calls, but the virtualized app itself runs as “native” code. Given that ARM has excellent virtualization support, I think that utilizing Rosetta here will be possible.

Wishful thinking.

 

[dogslobber]

If virtualization runs well enough you don't need to boot into a Boot Camp. I haven't used Boot Camp for years yet I use Parallels VMs, full screen, every day.

You can only virtualized an OS on the same processor class the OS is designed for. Virtualization is a hardware technique while emulation is all software. Emulation is where you do one class of processor on another (such as ARM on x86). Although, some sadists like to run emulation of the same processor class for kicks.
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Also, there’s a huge chasm of difference between “not permitting” and “not enabling.” The loss of Boot Camp doesn’t really tell us anything at all about how difficult it will be to boot Linux natively on an ARM macOS machine. I think Apple just rightly recognize that a vanishingly small number of their customers will ever care to do it and they don’t want to waste their energy continuing to support a Boot Camp dual boot product and device drivers for such a niche endeavor. Especially since virtualization is so effective. And, candidly, because Linux for ARM isn’t really a platform that people even care about these days. Maybe in 5 years, but in the near future? It’s an irrelevant platform in this context.

What you're really trying to say is that there was a market for Boot Camp as people wanted to run Windows x86 on their Intel Macs as well. It was a great selling point. ARM Linux is a very niche market dominated by embedded products that don't run X based apps. ARM Linux on the desktop really only gains share with the Raspberry Pi being cheap and cheerful. There won't be a market for ARM Linux natively on Macs at all. That's why there will be no Boot Camp equivalent. FWIW, Windows drivers are already available for Boot Camp x86 Windows so Apple only needed to repackage them.

 

[dogslobber]

FWIW, on my Mini 2018 I have this data for booting to usable desktop.

Boot Linux Mint 20.04 in qemu HVF in 20 secs (virtualization)
Boot Linux Mint 20.04 in qemu non-HVF in 100 secs (emulation)
Boot Win 10 2004 in qemu HVF in 58 secs (virtualization)
Boot Win 10 2004 in qemu non-HVF 4mins 45 secs (emulation)

 

[throAU]

And I would argue there are a lot of folks who switched to apple once virtualization/bootcamp became available. I am a sys admin of windows networks so i need that - i was able to use a MBP as my main machine starting in 2007. It has allowed me to VM many different OSes etc. To say that there are just a few and it is a super niche is just wrong IMO. I don't need bootcamp, but I need LOCAL vm's, I can't rely on cloud for this. Ultimately I may have to get a windows machine to do these things but I'd rather not have to.

I really thought apple would offer an x86 side CPU for precisely this reason - as an option not standard and maybe they will, who knows?

I am also a windows network admin. Powershell, azure and Remote Desktop all work on the Mac.

i use my Mac as my primary admin machine. It does not run boot camp.

but again: we are niche Mac users.
I said niche people will be impacted/complain. That’s what we are.

 

[nikhsub1]

I am also a windows network admin. Powershell, azure and Remote Desktop all work on the Mac.

i use my Mac as my primary admin machine. It does not run boot camp.

but again: we are niche Mac users.
I said niche people will be impacted/complain. That’s what we are.

Yes they all work on the mac - if you need LOCAL VMs, that is where the tricky part is.

 

[johngwheeler]

FWIW, on my Mini 2018 I have this data for booting to usable desktop.

Boot Linux Mint 20.04 in qemu HVF in 20 secs (virtualization)
Boot Linux Mint 20.04 in qemu non-HVF in 100 secs (emulation)
Boot Win 10 2004 in qemu HVF in 58 secs (virtualization)
Boot Win 10 2004 in qemu non-HVF 4mins 45 secs (emulation)

Thanks for that. The Win 10 emulation looks painful to use....

 

[tdar]

Apple and Parallels worked jointly on the virtualization environment that you saw in the keynote. It runs only Arm code now. But Parallels has been asked all week about if they can add x86 emulation to it. They said "we hope that we can".
If they even say that publicly, you can bet that they are very close to doing so, or they have it working and just need to clean it up. You don't even hint at a capability that you don't expect to bring.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Rosetta will not support virtualization using x86-64. And people are talking about it. But could x86-64 emulation be possible?

x86-64 emulation on ARM is totally possible. Will there be as easy of a way to do it available for ARM Macs? Totally different matter. My guess is that there will be. I don't know that it will be speedy enough to be viable. I'd guess that the greater effort (not just in terms of Apple, but in terms of the entire computing industry) will be to get Windows on ARM to be as viable as Windows on x86. ARM really has a bright future. x86 isn't bad. But Intel is running in to problems and it remains to be seen whether AMD can pick up enough of the slack to be seriously leading that architecture forward. But ARM is advancing exponentially faster than x86 these days much the way that x86 was advancing exponentially faster than PowerPC was fifteen years ago.

I think that it is futile to mention about games on the Mac until popular hits appear in large numbers.

The Catalinapocalype of Mac games did so much damage that, I'd imagine, many Mac game developers won't recover from. My Steam library list of games that I can play on a given computer is longest on Windows, second longest on a pre-Catalina Mac, third longest on Linux, and fourth longest on a Catalina Mac.

The only Valve games, for instance, that are 64-bit native, are Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and DotA2. I know Gabe Newell is not the biggest Apple fan by any means, but it took a ton to convince him to start porting games to Mac OS X on Intel and I'm sure that the x86 architecture was a big part of that.

If you look at what Aspyr is currently selling and you were to assess how they're doing based on what Mac games they currently sell, you'd think they were in trouble. (Thankfully, they work hard on Linux and iOS ports, so that's not a danger; but the Mac is clearly not what they're got going these days.)

The days of Macs playing much of the same games that Windows and Linux has are nearing their sad conclusion.

ok


Nope, you're wrong. If Apple was as open as you say they would let you boot into another OS but that's a big nope
Apple's ARM switch will be the end of Boot Camp


Then, on John Gruber's WWDC Talk Show, Craig Federighi confirmed that Apple would not support Boot Camp on ARM Macs:


Its clear Apple wants you to be on apple, using only apple products. They'll begrudgingly allow virtualization and run stuff, but if they can lock down a specific feature they will, such as not permitting people to install an operating system of their choosing.

You speak of Apple as though they make decisions and never reverse them. What they said of running Windows on the Mac for the forthcoming architecture mirrors exactly what they said the last time we were in this kind of situation fifteen years ago. No one expected Boot Camp and it's not like Boot Camp was even talked about on day 1. Microsoft's Surface Pro X is far from perfect, but it's better than the previous Windows 10 on ARM64 devices. They clearly are invested in making that experience better, so I'll bet that, as of right now, there are no plans for it. But you really never know. If I was Microsoft, I'd at least be having the conversation with Apple. Apple really could put Windows 10 for ARM64 on the map in a way that benefits the Mac as well as the industry at large.

Yes, it can be done....

View attachment 927938

What am I seeing here? Is this you running a Windows 10 VM on a current Mac and then recording the installation process with QuickTime? If so, what does this prove?

Apple and Parallels worked jointly on the virtualization environment that you saw in the keynote. It runs only Arm code now. But Parallels has been asked all week about if they can add x86 emulation to it. They said "we hope that we can".
If they even say that publicly, you can bet that they are very close to doing so, or they have it working and just need to clean it up. You don't even hint at a capability that you don't expect to bring.

It's too early to rule out anything other than the native direct booting of an x86 operating system from an ARM Mac. I'm pretty sure that's not happening at all or ever. Craig may have dismissed plans to have a dual-boot with another ARM OS such as Linux or Windows 10 on ARM64. That's today. We're still VERY early in this and things can change. People need to remember how Boot Camp originally was unveiled. It was a surprise out of left field that contradicted every stance made by Apple (at that time) since Steve Jobs first announced the switch to Intel. Apple knows that the ability to run Windows is important to a fair amount of Mac users. It's not unreasonable to assume that there will be some solution in place down the road, once this transition is actually in full swing.

 

[Marshall73]

For you, maybe some people wants to run Linux on their computers, natively. Shouldn't the choice what OS be left to the consumer?


Indeed

you can’t boot other os on iPads, I don’t hear anyone complaining about it?

 

[Tech198]

Rosetta will not support virtualization using x86-64. And people are talking about it. But could x86-64 emulation be possible?

well.. I'm sure Apple could do its own version of Intel VT (perhaps Apple VT) ?

you can’t boot other os on iPads, I don’t hear anyone complaining about it?

True, but that's only because there was never a 'transition' period either.

It's too early to rule out anything other than the native direct booting of an x86 operating system from an ARM Mac. I'm pretty sure that's not happening at all or ever. Craig may have dismissed plans to have a dual-boot with another ARM OS such as Linux or Windows 10 on ARM64. That's today. We're still VERY early in this and things can change. People need to remember how Boot Camp originally was unveiled. It was a surprise out of left field that contradicted every stance made by Apple (at that time) since Steve Jobs first announced the switch to Intel. Apple knows that the ability to run Windows is important to a fair amount of Mac users. It's not unreasonable to assume that there will be some solution in place down the road, once this transition is actually in full swing.

So you think Apple will always keep Bootcamp?

If anything the bigger fish always seem to win, and if that doesn't settle the "majority" of Apple users, they just kill it, and ask users to do go own way .. Many users would use Bootcamp and/or virtalation combinded , but i doubt it's 80% on a Mac.

 

[MichaelDT]

you can’t boot other os on iPads, I don’t hear anyone complaining about it?

I complain about it, I should be able to install android if I want to. I should be able to install the software I want on MY hardware. I’d wager major tech companies are courting a monopolistic practices/fixing lawsuit if the trend continues. There is 0 reason I shouldn’t be able to use another OS, and as mobile hardware stabilizes the questions will start to be asked.

 

[johngwheeler]

I complain about it, I should be able to install android if I want to. I should be able to install the software I want on MY hardware. I’d wager major tech companies are courting a monopolistic practices/fixing lawsuit if the trend continues. There is 0 reason I shouldn’t be able to use another OS, and as mobile hardware stabilizes the questions will start to be asked.

Most people view a tablet as an appliance, like a TV or set-top box, and I expect only hobbyists have any interest in tinkering with it. Laptops / Desktops are slightly different because there are popular alternative OSes which a larger percentage (although still a small minority) are interested in.

Let's face it - playing around with alternative OSes on our hardware is something we do for fun in most cases - in order to learn how they work. To actually do productive tasks, it's generally easier to just have a dedicated machine. It saves a lot of time.