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Running Windows on the new M1 Chip?
- Thread starter fab5freddy
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- There is no Bootcamp anymore.
- Parallels is working on something, no ETA https://www.parallels.com/blogs/parallels-desktop-apple-silicon-mac/
- VMWare is working on something, no ETA
- CrossOver seems to be working, compatible only with few apps so far https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/18/run-windows-software-on-m1/
Expect both Parallels and VMware to run slower since now it has to provide a CPU emulation in addition to the emulation it was previously providing. Think back to the old days when we had PowerPC machines trying to emulate Intel machines.
The problem is the move away from the x86 - the existing emulators were working down on the machine language level to give you usable performance. They have to totally re-do it for ARM, and it may not even be possible to accurately and efficiently emulate Windows on the M1 unless and until Microsoft makes an ARM based Windows available for general use.
I would not expect to run Windows on an M1 in the next year at least.
I would not expect to run Windows on an M1 in the next year at least.
it should be possible using qemu but performance will be realy slow. But the M1 is a fast chip. Some people installed windows on raspberry pi https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/...raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=246886
On the bright side Windows hardware is cheap for a basic computer.
unless you need it to be fast you can get away with having a spare machine.
(That’s my thought process looking forward... most of the Windows apps I run are games from Windows 95 and XP so nothing demanding though...)
To be clear: there is ZERO indication that either VMWare or Parallels is going to pivot their product to do emulation of x86. Everyone expects these first releases to be virtualization of ARM-based VM's.
I'm not an Apple Silicon expert, but neither are the other people answering your question. 10 days ago if you had asked me if a base 8 GB Air would outperform an Intel 2020 16 GB 16" MacBook Pro, at least in processor speed, I'd have looked at you like you were nuts. That MacBook Air may not be able to sustain performance like that, but it can do it for 10-15 minutes at least. Maybe longer.
Right now the only answer you should believe is we don't know yet. 2 weeks ago a lot of people were saying 8gb was way too little (some still are saying this) and that there is no way that an ARM chip can maintain fast speeds and battery life. 2 weeks ago I would have agreed with them. Look at reviews from almost any computer news and info source (not just Apple centric, but CNET, ZDNet, PC Magazine, I even saw something in the Wall Street Journal) and they are saying the speed AND endurance are incredible- they usually also have something they dislike, and frequently its the 720P camera, but others complain of something else.
There is going to be some big drawback to Apple's shiny new chipset. I don't know what it is yet. I can guarantee you that there will be people screaming about it as soon as it shows up. Maybe it WILL suck with virtualization. Maybe we've already seen the drawback: You can't upgrade memory. Maybe the lack of a game level GPU and the inability to add one.
Wait. I don't think it's going to take a year before we know about virtualization, one way or the other.
Looks like you CAN run Windows on the new M1 Macbooks :
9to5mac.com
M1 Macs can now run Windows apps and games through CrossOver 20 - 9to5Mac
We already know that the new Macs with M1 chip can run both Intel and ARM apps made for macOS...
9to5mac.com
Looks like you CAN run Windows on the new M1 Macbooks :
M1 Macs can now run Windows apps and games through CrossOver 20 - 9to5Mac
We already know that the new Macs with M1 chip can run both Intel and ARM apps made for macOS...
Thats not full Windows though :-(
(It’s awesome, just adding detail)
Crossover provides a wrapper and supports a set of APIs but not the full set, so if an application only uses 10 APIs and crossover supports those 10 it will work, otherwise it won’t
Being an expert on Apple Silicon isn't what matters in answering "Can we run Windows 10 on Apple Silicon" - being a Microsoft expert is.
Microsoft has an ARM version of Windows 10, but they only license it for sale shipping on computers from the factory, they don't offer a separate version of it. The only way to get it is to buy a Windows 10 ARM computer, and the version you get is custom for that specific ARM computer. There is no "generic ARM Windows 10 installer."
Microsoft would need to make an "Apple Silicon version" of Windows 10. This is something only Microsoft can choose to do. (Or Apple could choose to pay Microsoft to do it, the way other Windows 10 ARM device makers do; but I can't see Apple offering Windows as a from-the-factory option.)
Since Apple's announcement, Microsoft has made many statements about making Microsoft Office AS-native. But they haven't said a word about Windows.
Note that developers have gotten a Linux bootloader to run just fine on Apple Silicon Macs - Apple uses a form of Secure Boot, but allows the user (with some effort) to turn it off, so booting an alternate OS is absolutely possible. And since Microsoft is the official signer of Secure Boot, Windows should be able to load no problem if MS decides to make a version for AS Macs.
So it all comes down to: "Will Microsoft decide that Mac users loading Windows on their own is a big enough target market to make an Apple Silicon version of Windows 10?" Only Microsoft executive can answer that.
Note that on supported ARM Windows 10 devices, Microsoft just released an x86-64 (aka "64-bit Intel") emulator, allowing ARM Windows 10 devices to run Intel code, similar to how M1 Macs can run Intel macOS code. (Although MS's implementation is a full on architecture-emulator, as discussed below, rather than a one-time "code translation".)
Separately, there is the option of emulating an Intel CPU and running Windows inside a virtual machine. This is similar to what is possible on Intel Macs through programs like Parallels Desktop, VMWare Workstation, and the like. On Intel hardware, those systems just pass through the CPU instructions, and emulate the hardware peripherals. You get near-native performance, like you had rebooted in to Windows, for CPU-intensive tasks; and with modern GPU API transcoding, you can get decent graphics performance.
On Apple Silicon, an architecture emulator would need to be added. This isn't unprecedented at all - when Macs ran on PowerPC, the program Virtual PC did this. Microsoft even liked it so much, they bought the company that made Virtual PC, and used it as the basis for their *own* virtualization software (how called "Hyper-V", although I imagine Hyper-V contains very little legacy Virtual PC code.) On Intel, there are many different "alternate architecture" emulation software like this - PearPC for example that lets you run a virtualized PowerPC Mac. Or Mini vMac to run a virtualized 68k Mac.
There are two ways this can be accomplished - Running an Intel virtualization software and letting Apple's Rosetta 2 do the translation from Intel code to Apple Silicon code; or making Apple Silicon native software that includes its own Intel architecture emulator.
Apple specifically disallows virtualization software to use Rosetta 2. I've tried it, it fails. Almost certainly from the fact that Rosetta 2 tries to translate all the code in a program up front, rather than doing it live; and trying to virtualize a whole OS makes that impossible.
So baking Intel emulation in to Apple Silicon-native virtualization app is the way. Note that Parallels already has a functioning beta of Apple Silicon-native virtualization software, but what was demonstrated was running ARM code, an ARM version of Linux. This is similar to the way Parallels works on Intel - it didn't include the Intel emulation. Both Parallels and VMWare have stated that they do plan on releasing AS-native versions. Neither one has specified if they will include an Intel emulator to allow Intel operating systems to run. I would imagine they will.
Lastly, if Microsoft does release an Apple Silicon version of Windows 10, it should run in the Apple Silicon-native Parallels/VMWare, even without Intel code translation, allowing Windows 10 to run in a VM in macOS. And since Microsoft has an Intel emulator in Windows 10, this virtualized ARM-native Windows 10 would be able to run Intel Windows apps inside the VM, the same way macOS on AS can run Intel macOS apps.
So a Windows VM is technically possible but requires Microsoft’s legal permission, if I understand what you are saying. And there shouldn’t be a huge performance hit to the programs people are running for doing so. So how likely is it that MS might do that? Not should or shouldn’t Microsoft do that, but IS Microsoft likely to?
There are two types of "Windows VM" at play here.
Native ARM Windows 10 VM, running native ARM code on M1. This would require Microsoft making an "Apple Silicon" version of Windows 10/ARM. This is "simple" for the VM software - Parallels has already demonstrated a version of their software running an ARM Linux. And the ARM version of Windows even has an Intel emulator so it can run Intel Windows software. But this requires Microsoft to make this version of Windows available to Mac owners.
Intel Windows 10 VM, running in a virtual machine program that includes an Intel code emulator. This would run bone-standard Windows 10 that you can buy from Microsoft today; but requires a lot more work on the VM software's part to add the Intel emulation.
Back in the 1990s, Windows also ran on three other platforms: PPC, Alpha and one other. Maybe MIPs. Microsoft made the binaries and the kits. I worked on porting an application to Alpha/NT. I even have about four tee-shirts from the project. There was a product, similar to Rosetta, that ran x86 binaries via code translation.
So Microsoft could do this if they had the inclination to do so. Ideally with the help of Apple. I don't see any real reason why Apple would help them - Apple would probably prefer that their customers got off Windows altogether.
I would echo what others have said - buy a cheap Windows system. I gave one away a few months ago (Core i7-920, 24 GB of RAM, 240 GB SSD) and may give away another with even higher specs, soon. Or use a cloud - either professional or home. There are so many ways to do things these days.
I have migrated from programs that are platform specific to programs that run on multiple platforms, typically Windows, macOS and Linux. The providers would typically have little difficulty building macOS/AS kits if they already produce macOS/Intel kids.
So Microsoft could do this if they had the inclination to do so. Ideally with the help of Apple. I don't see any real reason why Apple would help them - Apple would probably prefer that their customers got off Windows altogether.
I would echo what others have said - buy a cheap Windows system. I gave one away a few months ago (Core i7-920, 24 GB of RAM, 240 GB SSD) and may give away another with even higher specs, soon. Or use a cloud - either professional or home. There are so many ways to do things these days.
I have migrated from programs that are platform specific to programs that run on multiple platforms, typically Windows, macOS and Linux. The providers would typically have little difficulty building macOS/AS kits if they already produce macOS/Intel kids.
Yeah, this is one reason why my next Mac I plan to buy either at the very end of this year or the start of next year is the 13" 2.0 GHz quad-core i5 MacBook Pro (with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB SSD), so I can still run Windows virtual machines if need be. Especially since I like to make Let's Play commentary videos of old computer games of my childhood that won't run on any operating systems newer than Windows XP, and since Anthro New England in 2022 is going to have a 1990s theme and I plan to host a panel about 1990s kids' computer games, and if I use that MacBook Pro I can run a Windows XP virtual machine on VMware Fusion to play said older games! (Any that use the Scumm engine I can just use ScummVM, though, and I may also demonstrate at least a couple of DOS games using Boxer, which has a 64-bit Beta available.)
Plus, I read on EveryMac.com that the 13" M1 MacBook Pro does indeed outperform the 2.0 GHz i5 MacBook Pro a bit, especially if it has 16 GB of RAM, but I'm not fully ready to take the jump into the M1 world yet; I might wait a year or two until they come out with the more powerful version of the M1 chip for the higher-end Macs and they make a nicely beefed-up Mac Mini using that, and get that to replace my 2012 quad-core i7 Mini. Besides, with the 13" i5 MacBook Pro I can at least run Mac OS 11 Big Sur, AND still use the Mini as my main desktop (maybe even get a KVM machine for running the Pro like a desktop alongside the Mini!)
Plus, I read on EveryMac.com that the 13" M1 MacBook Pro does indeed outperform the 2.0 GHz i5 MacBook Pro a bit, especially if it has 16 GB of RAM, but I'm not fully ready to take the jump into the M1 world yet; I might wait a year or two until they come out with the more powerful version of the M1 chip for the higher-end Macs and they make a nicely beefed-up Mac Mini using that, and get that to replace my 2012 quad-core i7 Mini. Besides, with the 13" i5 MacBook Pro I can at least run Mac OS 11 Big Sur, AND still use the Mini as my main desktop (maybe even get a KVM machine for running the Pro like a desktop alongside the Mini!)
Oh yeah, Microsoft absolutely *could* do it.
I have a MIPS system running Windows NT, a PowerPC system running Windows NT, and an Itanium system running Windows Server 2008. (Sadly, I don't yet have an Alpha.) And, as mentioned, they currently offer Windows 10 for ARM - but they only offer it directly to the product makers, not to the general public to load on other systems.
PowerPC, Alpha, MIPS, x86, Itanium, x86-64 all have one thing in common - they are "standard architectures" where computers running them all conformed to a specific set of standards. You could buy a Motorola PowerPC system or an IBM PowerPC system, and know they had the same underlying firmware system, hardware abstraction, and the like. You could buy an Itanium from HP or Unisys, and know it had the same basic method of operation. You can buy an x86 or x86-64 PC and know that they're all the same basic thing underneath.
ARM systems tend to be *VERY* custom. There isn't a single "ARM PC standard". Heck, Microsoft has had two completely incompatible Windows-on-ARM standards, for the original Surface, and for the latest ARM Surface.
Multiple companies make ARM-based servers, but they're all completely different.
With x86, I can install Linux or Windows on an external drive on my MacBook Pro via Boot Camp, then plug that drive in to my 2-year-old Dell PC, and it will boot just fine. Then move it to my 6-year-old homebuilt PC, and it will boot fine. Then move it to my 10 year old Lenovo laptop, and it will boot just fine.
Can't do that with ARM. If I make a Linux boot disk on the new ARM Surface, I can't boot my old original Surface from it. Nor can I boot an ARM server. If I install Linux on one brand ARM server, I can't move it to a different brand ARM server. Heck, some of the ARM server vendors, I can't even move it between models by the same vendor!
Has anyone tried booting the ARM version of Windows (from UUP Dump) on the M1? I have it running on my Pi 3 and 4. Performance is poor due to the lack of drivers however.