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jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
How do you even know they ignored? Doesn't make sense and MS tried to use x86-64 on ARM but they didnt.
So you have no source for your statements? I know because both Apple and Microsoft have shipped x86 translators and Intel didn't show up with a lawsuit. Seems pretty obvious but I'll wait for your post with the sources of your statements.
 
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VArase

macrumors regular
Feb 1, 2008
114
60
Chicagoland
I have no idea what you wanna say. The fact is macOS is the worst platform for gaming among other platforms such as PC and consoles and yet Apple is not investing on PC/Console games on Mac. Having a powerful machine is just a beginning since the platform and software aspect is another huge problem. At this point, it's nothing but dream.
I'm saying that I expect M1x to be fast enough to run even Win x86 games under a hypervisor at speed, and as the Apple Silicon pool of computers increases in size, developers will probably become interested in making Catalyst games which can run on the entire pool of Apple Silicon devices.
 

VArase

macrumors regular
Feb 1, 2008
114
60
Chicagoland
Then how come Intel argued and warned toward both MS and Qualcomm for using x86-64 apps on ARM, not AMD? MS finally can use x86-64 software on ARM with Windows 11. And still, Intel owns x86 itself.
Intel can warn and cajole and say anything they want, but what they can enforce in court is yet another matter.

Have you seen the Intel attack ads against Apple?

I think Intel's getting desperate.

In the case of Qualcomm, they're probably threatening that if they put try to put in x86 hardware emulation Intel will come after them - not that I think Qualcomm is capable of such a feat.
 
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sunny5

macrumors 68000
Jun 11, 2021
1,832
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So you have no source for your statements? I know because both Apple and Microsoft have shipped x86 translators and Intel didn't show up with a lawsuit. Seems pretty obvious but I'll wait for your post with the sources of your statements.


First of all, it's x86 emulation, not translation. The article clearly says Intel threaten MS for emulating x86 for ARM. The article that I provided early shows that Intel does not widely license others to use x86.
 
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russell_314

macrumors 604
Feb 10, 2019
6,658
10,259
USA
No you cannot game on a Mac under the normal definition. There are a few exceptions such as if you play World of Warcraft then that’s all you play or maybe a few games that are on macOS then you’re fine. If you want to play games in the normal sense of a person playing PC games a Mac will not work. If you have an older Intel Mac you could boot camp into Windows but even that isn’t good. Also in the normal sense you cannot run windows on an M1 Mac. Yes I know about the ARM version that’s not the same.

If you want to game and you’re not very serious about it buy an affordable Windows gaming laptop. You can get something with a 1650 TI for not too much money.
 
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jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
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First of all, it's x86 emulation, not translation.
That article is over 4 years old. No one doubts that Intel threatened. That threat appears to be toothless. Both Apple and Microsoft do translation. You are incorrect.
 
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sunny5

macrumors 68000
Jun 11, 2021
1,832
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That article is over 4 years old. No one doubts that Intel threatened. That threat appears to be toothless. Both Apple and Microsoft do translation. You are incorrect.
Now you are admitting that I'm right huh? As a result, ARM version of Windows 10 still does not support x86-64 emulation. At least Window 11 now uses translation but not Windows 10 because of Intel. You are incorrect, sir. Clearly, you didnt even read articles after all.

Windows 10 transition doesn't even show up on Google search but emulation. You have no idea what you are talking about.
 
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jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
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Now you are admitting that I'm right huh? As a result, ARM version of Windows 10 still does not support x86-64 emulation. At least Window 11 now uses translation but not Windows 10 because of Intel. You are incorrect, sir. Clearly, you didnt even read articles after all.

Windows 10 transition doesn't even show up on Google search but emulation. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Microsoft uses the word emulation in their documentation but by most modern definitions what they are doing is binary translation or recompilation. Emulation is an old concept that has changed definitions over time. Both x86 and x86-64 are being translated. Preview versions of Windows 10 had x64 compatibility but that never shipped in a stable version of Windows 10 and now has been moved to Windows 11. You can read about it here.


To wit: (emphasis mine)
The WOW64 layer of Windows allows x86 code to run on the ARM64 version of Windows. x86 emulation works by compiling blocks of x86 instructions into ARM64 instructions with optimizations to improve performance. A service caches these translated blocks of code to reduce the overhead of instruction translation and allow for optimization when the code runs again. The caches are produced for each module so that other apps can make use of them on first launch.

This MIT presentation defines emulation as "OS software interprets instructions at run-time" and binary translation as "convert at install and/or load time". I believe these are the current accepted definitions.

Unless you can provide more documentation showing that Intel is still threatening Apple, Microsoft, or Qualcomm, I don't think there is much more to discuss. Please feel free to link to something concrete if you have it.
 
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sunny5

macrumors 68000
Jun 11, 2021
1,832
1,705
Microsoft uses the word emulation in their documentation but by most modern definitions what they are doing is binary translation or recompilation. Emulation is an old concept that has changed definitions over time. Both x86 and x86-64 are being translated. Preview versions of Windows 10 had x64 compatibility but that never shipped in a stable version of Windows 10 and now has been moved to Windows 11. You can read about it here.


To wit: (emphasis mine)


This MIT presentation defines emulation as "OS software interprets instructions at run-time" and binary translation as "convert at install and/or load time". I believe these are the current accepted definitions.

Unless you can provide more documentation showing that Intel is still threatening Apple, Microsoft, or Qualcomm, I don't think there is much more to discuss. Please feel free to link to something concrete if you have it.
Did I ever say STILL threatening? You still didnt argue why MS didnt even use emulating x86-64 on Windows 10 so as long as you dont answer it, I won't.
 

VArase

macrumors regular
Feb 1, 2008
114
60
Chicagoland


First of all, it's x86 emulation, not translation. The article clearly says Intel threaten MS for emulating x86 for ARM. The article that I provided early shows that Intel does not widely license others to use x86.
Actually, the x86 engine inside ARM Windows is much like Rosetta - it reads x86 code and translates it into ARM code.

Where Qualcomm could get into trouble is attempting to include x86 IP in a CPU design ... something I don't really think Qualcomm is capable of.

Remember Microsoft's boast that they were developing their own ARM chip? Since Microsoft has no silicon team, I believe they were leaving that development to their silicon proxy: Qualcomm.

Even in their ARM SoCs, Qualcomm (like Samsung) mostly uses stock ARM cores. Why do you think they bought that ARM development company founded by some engineers who left Apple's silicon team? They were hoping to get their own core design team going from those folks.

To my knowledge, the only ones actually doing ARM CPU design are ARM and Apple - and often ARM is moving forward at Apple's request such as development of 64 bit ARM Instruction Set Architecture (AArch64) used in the A7 and the iPhone 5s.

If you look back that far, you can see that Apple's been playing a very long game on its path to independence from Intel.
 
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VArase

macrumors regular
Feb 1, 2008
114
60
Chicagoland
And you know that ARM version of Windows is available, right?
To my knowledge there is no facility in any Apple Silicon device for booting an alternate operating system.

I think you can boot another copy of macOS on another drive, but I'm not sure that ARM Windows would know how to boot on say an M1 Mac.

I think the Linux kernel guys figured out how to do it, but to my knowledge there is no Linux distro which is produced which is capable of running on a Apple Silicon Mac.
 
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jlc1978

macrumors 603
Aug 14, 2009
5,865
4,840
To my knowledge there is no facility in any Apple Silicon device for booting an alternate operating system.

I think you can boot another copy of macOS on another drive, but I'm not sure that ARM Windows would know how to boot on say an M1 Mac.

I think the Linux kernel guys figured out how to do it, but to my knowledge there is no Linux distro which is produced which is capable of running on a Apple Silicon Mac.
Ubuntu
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
To my knowledge there is no facility in any Apple Silicon device for booting an alternate operating system.

I think you can boot another copy of macOS on another drive, but I'm not sure that ARM Windows would know how to boot on say an M1 Mac.

I think the Linux kernel guys figured out how to do it, but to my knowledge there is no Linux distro which is produced which is capable of running on a Apple Silicon Mac.
Actually there are two versions of Linux and one BSD that are booting on the M1. And they use an official API introduced by Apple in MacOS 11.2 to run alternate kernels. If you are interested the tool is kmutil and it has a man page.

More info here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...oc-for-mac-pro-now-what.2306486/post-30186455
 

VArase

macrumors regular
Feb 1, 2008
114
60
Chicagoland
Actually there are two versions of Linux and one BSD that are booting on the M1. And they use an official API introduced by Apple in MacOS 11.2 to run alternate kernels. If you are interested the tool is kmutil and it has a man page.

More info here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...oc-for-mac-pro-now-what.2306486/post-30186455
Nah ... I think it's kinda dumb to buy an expensive Mac to boot Linux - macOS is unixy enough for me.

That's why I never looked into it when I first heard about it.
 

skaertus

macrumors 601
Feb 23, 2009
4,243
1,398
Brazil
Currently I am faced with a dilemma, which laptop to buy.
I need a laptop that I can run all my code and game on it for fun.

I sold my gaming console because realized, I could get a laptop like the G15 or Blade 14 5900hx, and if will probably perform better then my ps4 pro.

But Apple is in my blood lol, I am wondering if the new M1x chipped MacBook pros (14in and 16in) will be a good option for gaming.

I know currently Mac’s pretty much suck at playing games, but I still have hope, and was wondering if anyone knows anything about it.
Even if the M1X MacBook Pro has all the power to play games, there is a crucial problem to be solved, which is the lack of games for the Mac platform.

And, for game developers, it does not really matter whether the Mac is powerful enough to run games. What really matters is whether there are enough Mac users to buy games to justify developing/porting the game to the platform. There are too few Macs sold compared to Windows PCs, and even fewer Mac users are willing to use their Macs to run games. So, developers are likely to only release a Mac version of a game after releasing it for Playstation, XBOX, Switch, Windows, iOS, and Android.
 
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Gerdi

macrumors 6502
Apr 25, 2020
449
301
I think you can boot another copy of macOS on another drive, but I'm not sure that ARM Windows would know how to boot on say an M1 Mac.

Not out of the box. Windows needs UEFI/ACPI for booting. So a Mac would first need to load UEFI (which would need to be provided by Apple) and then boot Windows. Thats precisely how it works when booting Windows on the Rasperry PI for instance or within any VM.
If Apple would be willing to support booting Windows, they would just need to provide the UEFI including all required ACPIs. In addition for a somewhat reasonable Windows experience, Apple would also need to provide all the Windows drivers for the proprietary Apple silicon devices like Video/DX12, Audio, network etc.
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
Not out of the box. Windows needs UEFI/ACPI for booting. So a Mac would first need to load UEFI (which would need to be provided by Apple) and then boot Windows. Thats precisely how it works when booting Windows on the Rasperry PI for instance or within any VM.
If Apple would be willing to support booting Windows, they would just need to provide the UEFI including all required ACPIs. In addition for a somewhat reasonable Windows experience, Apple would also need to provide all the Windows drivers for the proprietary Apple silicon devices like Video/DX12, Audio, network etc.
Or Microsoft could alter their boot process similar to what the Ahasi Linux port is trying (and mostly succeeding). They have booting working, a portion of the hardware like USB, and a non-accelerated frame buffer to output to the screen working already.

I agree that Microsoft isn't likely to be very interested in doing that but on the other hand, Apple isn't likely to be interested in changing their boot to support UEFI.
 

AgentMcGeek

macrumors 6502
Jan 18, 2016
374
305
London, UK
So, developers are likely to only release a Mac version of a game after releasing it for Playstation, XBOX, Switch, Windows, iOS, and Android.
Once a game has been released on iOS, it should be fairly easy to port on MacOS. Especially since some iPads also run on M1.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,516
19,661
And, for game developers, it does not really matter whether the Mac is powerful enough to run games. What really matters is whether there are enough Mac users to buy games to justify developing/porting the game to the platform. There are too few Macs sold compared to Windows PCs, and even fewer Mac users are willing to use their Macs to run games. So, developers are likely to only release a Mac version of a game after releasing it for Playstation, XBOX, Switch, Windows, iOS, and Android.

Well, there are plenty of Mac games even now, so I imagine it is a profitable business even with the low user numbers. I doubt the number of Mac gamers will decrease as the hardware becomes much more capable.

Or Microsoft could alter their boot process similar to what the Ahasi Linux port is trying (and mostly succeeding). They have booting working, a portion of the hardware like USB, and a non-accelerated frame buffer to output to the screen working already.

I agree that Microsoft isn't likely to be very interested in doing that but on the other hand, Apple isn't likely to be interested in changing their boot to support UEFI.

Booting is a mere trifle. The real challenge is what comes afterwards. Apple Silicon uses non-standard hardware protocols and custom devices. Even if Apple Silicon ran on UEFI, Windows would need extensive kernel modification to run on it, and let’s not even talk about the GPU drivers…
 
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