Windows M1 Mac ARM Virtualization Showcase



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Apple Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi last week told us that the ARM version of Windows 10 can run natively on Apple Silicon M1 Macs, but it is “really Microsoft’s responsibility.” “. Now a developer has found a workaround for the first Windows ARM virtualization running successfully on a Mac M1 and claims the performance is “pretty fast”.

As Federighi explained that the M1 Macs could certainly run the ARM version of Windows 10 but that would be up to Microsoft, we’ve detailed the issues Apple is currently facing and why it can’t offer Boot Camp with Apple Silicon Macs:

Microsoft’s current license does not allow Apple to use its ARM version of Windows 10 (as it is not preinstalled). And previously, Microsoft said it had no news to share when The Verge asked it to make a change to allow Boot Camp on ARM Macs.

It may be some time before Microsoft changes its mind about its Windows ARM policy to run native on Mac (if it does). But in the meantime, The 8-Bit found that developer Alexander Graf was able to make some adjustments to get his Mac M1 to run the OS as virtualization and even pointed out that “it’s pretty eye-catching here” .

Graf also noted that “Windows ARM64 can run x86 applications very well. It’s not as fast as Rosetta 2, but close.

The 8-bit gave more details about the process Graf went through to achieve this:

He was able to achieve this by running Windows ARM64 Insider Preview virtualizing it through Hypervisor.framework. This framework allows users to interact with user-space virtualization technologies without having to write kernel extensions (KEXTs), according to Apple.

Additionally, this would not have been possible without applying a custom patch to the QEMU virtualizer. QEMU is an open source machine emulator and virtualizer. It is known to “achieve near-native performance” by executing guest code directly on the host processor. It therefore goes without saying that only ARM guests can be perfectly virtualized on an ARM machine like M1 compatible Macs.

Graf also mentions in one of his tweets that “Windows ARM64 can run x86 applications very well. It’s not as fast as Rosetta 2, but close.

Graf believes his process is “certainly reproducible” but naturally it will not provide a fully stable system.

For advanced users, you can try the workaround (at your own risk) with detailed instructions from Graf here. But for the most part, using CrossOver or waiting for Parallels support to land will be ideal.

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