Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Microsoft Brings x64 Emulation to Windows on Arm PCs

displayblock said:
There's many different implementations of ARM, and just because Windows works on Microsoft's ARM doesn't mean it will automatically work with Apple's implementation of ARM.
Click to expand...
Apple licensed the instruction set architecture from ARM. What this means is that Apple agreed to implement the instruction set (but may implement instructions outside the instruction set).

So, M1 is binary compatible with ARMv8.4 (or lower ARMv8) code. Microsoft has nothing to do with it.

The possible difficulties arise from device drivers (including boot) in virtual environments.
 
  • Like
Reactions: amartinez1660
ph001bi said:
Apple's interest in having Windows on Arm on his chips is that the more people use Windows on Arm, the more software vendor will optimise and release ARM versions of their products. This is what's happening with Adobe for instance.
Click to expand...
Adobe is releasing Universal versions of their software purely because they need to support Apple products, not because they care about Windows on Arm. I have seen no announcement from Adobe that they plan to support Windows on Arm. Companies that support macOS will port to Apple Silicon as their alternative is leaving the platform.
 
  • Like
Reactions: amartinez1660
lederermc said:
There might be something in the M1 that enables Rosetta2 to be so fast. And it's not in MS's ARM.
Click to expand...
That can be part of the reason. But it has been frequently stressed hat Rosetta 2 isn’t emulation but translation (whereas Microsoft calls its solution explicitly emulation), and that this is what explains its good performance.
 
  • Like
Reactions: IG88
displayblock said:
Does MacRumors have a source that has officially confirmed this? There's many different implementations of ARM, and just because Windows works on Microsoft's ARM doesn't mean it will automatically work with Apple's implementation of ARM.

Even if Windows ARM was allowed to be licensed for any device a user chooses, I don't think it'd be compatible with M1. So I don't think the incompatibility is due to licensing issues.

It's on the developers to make it compatible, not the contract signers.
Click to expand...
Windows runs on a hardware abstraction layer, and can be ported to just about any architecture. In the past, Windows has run natively on:
  • PowerPC,
  • Intel 32 bit
  • Intel 64 bit (Itanium x86)
  • AMD 64 bit (x86-64)
  • ARM, and
  • RISC.
Assuming that Apple Silicone is ARM v8 compatible (hint: it is) it's nothing more than providing drivers for the hardware and actually selling a Windows on ARM license, something that Microsoft does not currently do (their SKUs are all for x86-64 right now, I'm not even sure if you can buy x86 32 bit anymore)
 
jz0309 said:
You really think so? Macs have about 10% market share, IF 10% of Mac users were interested in this, and I doubt it’s that many ... 1% of the PC market, do t think that’s interesting for Microsoft...
But it’s an interesting step, maybe an opportunity for Arm in the PC market overall...
Click to expand...
I've had this debate on the "Alternatives to Mac" forums here. Parallels claims to have 6 million users. Let's assume a similar number are using either VMware Fusion or VirtualBox (so 12 million). If all of them buy Apple Silicon Macs over the next 5 years, and if Microsoft charges $100, that's about $1.2 billion of revenue. Not huge in itself, but it could prove ARM to be a viable platform for Windows, and it wouldn't cost much for Microsoft to develop.

Clearly Apple and Microsoft don't see it as a priority, otherwise they'd have at least made an announcement either at WWDC (when Apple demoed Office 365 for Apple Silicon), or the rollout of the M1 Macs last month. But that's not to say that it won't ever happen.
 
People don't have complaints about Rosetta 2? You can't export tracks properly out of Apple's own Logic DAW.
 
  • Like
Reactions: derekamoss
If you run the Windows 10 x86 emulator on the latest Qualcomm "desktop" ARM CPUs (i.e. 8cx Gen 2), it gives performance equivalent to ~400 in Geekbench 5 (vs ~800 native). Emulating x86/x64 is of course very important on Windows because the vast majority of Windows is x86/x64, and that won't change any time in the foreseeable future given that x64 has and will continue to have a massive marketshare advantage in the Windows ecosystem.

The M1 scores ~1300 in Rosetta and ~1700 native. It's hard to imagine Windows OEMs having much success selling ARM systems that run most of the Windows software 4x slower than a MacBook Air. Within the x64 world, that differential would be equivalent to selling a circa-2008 Intel/AMD Ultrabook when your competitor is offering a 2020 Intel/AMD Ultrabook. Even the Intel/AMD systems won't be very competitive against the M1 and its successors, but at least they won't be totally embarrassed like the ARM systems.
 
Apple has the benefit of being the chip vendor and OS vendor. So it can build x86 enabling features into Apple Silicon and write macOS to capitalize on this hardware. Microsoft can’t do that but it could work very closely with AMD Arm or Qualcomm.

But I won’t hold my breath, as Microsoft seems to be more focused on xBox than on making Windows the best it can be. Soon, I’m sure we’re going to see a Windows 11. I found it amusing how the Windows version number jumped from 8 to 10, and stayed there perpetually, similar to how macOS was on version 10 for 17 years or so.
 
handle manifest said:
From what I've read, Microsoft makes very, very little money from retail sales of Windows licenses for all computers. The profit comes from sales of enterprise licenses and bulk sales of OEM licenses to PC manufacturers.
Click to expand...
True. Few people actually buy operating system software by itself. Windows upgrades used to be more common, but Windows XP, 7, and 10 were/are stable enough that most people didn't upgrade until they bought new computers. That said, it wouldn't cost much for Microsoft to offer downloads.
 
  • Like
Reactions: handle manifest
Crash0veride said:
They released Lightroom for Windows Arm the same day the released it for the M1 Macs. And the photoshop beta works on both. Seems a pretty good indication they plan to support it.
Click to expand...
That is a good sign for Windows on ARM. I had not seen that. :)
 
b348xyx said:
3 years too late ??
Click to expand...

RIGHT?!

Apple ... a MUCH smaller company and less resources of personal, coders, engineers ... yet STILL continues to innovate and lead Microsoft in numerous areas at a faster rate!

... we've heard the feedback that customers would like to see those x64 apps running on ARM64 ...
Click to expand...

This is definitely a knee-jerk reaction by Microsoft as someone else beat them to getting this done. Now they need to make ARM64 Windows available to others via license.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Madd the Sane
MrTemple said:
0%: Chance that Microsoft will make Windows run on Apple Silicon.

100%: Chance that somebody else will do it.
Click to expand...

100% chance that Microsoft waits until they think they have competition and then release windows arm
 
Last edited:
manu chao said:
That can be part of the reason. But it has been frequently stressed hat Rosetta 2 isn’t emulation but translation (whereas Microsoft calls its solution explicitly emulation), and that this is what explains its good performance.
Click to expand...
That’s exactly true, in addition M1 is that much better than Qualcom garbage. Translation is actually easier than emulation but there are security and noisy neighbor implications. Apple laid the groundwork with sandboxing and limiting kernel mode which made this easy for them.
 
jz0309 said:
You really think so? Macs have about 10% market share, IF 10% of Mac users were interested in this, and I doubt it’s that many ... 1% of the PC market, do t think that’s interesting for Microsoft...
But it’s an interesting step, maybe an opportunity for Arm in the PC market overall...
Click to expand...

Funny enough ... at 6-8% Microsoft found it lucrative enough to port MS Office continually to the mac platform and has continued to do so for decades and MS Office is at a MUCH cheaper retail cost than Windows has been traditionally. Remember ... 10% is a LOT of computers and faithful users using another platform than Microsoft's own yet are still customers; 10s of millions.

Also Microsoft + Apple = 90%+ of the total computing market for personal computers.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Madd the Sane
MrTemple said:
0%: Chance that Microsoft will make Windows run on Apple Silicon.

100%: Chance that somebody else will do it.
Click to expand...
MSFT even re-released the 1998 computer game Age of Empires II in 2012 as the "HD edition," specifically for Windows only even though the original had a fully equivalent Mac version too.

Something about the game needing Direct3D to run even though it's the same jank 1998 code with a little modification. And I mean it. The same original bugs were present, plus new ones. It was even buggier than the original game and not "HD" in any sense of the word other than the game resolution being bumped up, i.e. showing more on the screen at once, which the original already had mods for.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back