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Parallels 16.5 Can Virtualize ARM Windows Natively on M1 Macs With Up to 30% Faster Performance

M1 Pro, 16GB.

My Cinebench R23 testing is as follows:

- Tech Preview Update 2, 8 cores, 8GB RAM: 2500 Multicore

- Release client, 8 cores 8GB RAM: 2700 Multicore

- MacOS Native performance: 7700 Multicore

Other machines I have at hand (most to show how impressive the M1 is given it's wattage, lack of hyperthreading and only 4 performance cores):

- Ryzen 7 5800X, 4.75Ghz Allcore, 140w draw: 16200 Multicore

- Core i9 10850k, 4.8Ghz Allcore, mild undervolt, 250w draw: 15800 Multicore

Other observations:

I use a piece of software called S-Frame for structural design. The calculations it runs are essentially massive matrix operations (it utilizes finite element methods to determine structural displacement/reactions). Running a 2D mesh comprised of about 1000 nodes under 10 condition analysis takes my Ryzen 5800x machine longer than my M1 on Parallels.
 
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Cheesehead Dave said:
It runs like crap. It more of a Jurassic Park "too preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should".
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I was hoping to be able to run Minecraft Pocket edition on this. I'm just going to assume that it's not going to be good enough for that. Bummer.
 
W
Mr. Dee said:
I suspect that’s also part of the reason since there were lot of persons commenting about issues. But I clearly stated in a disclaimer this is not officially supported and you should backup before attempting to use it. I just find it bothersome I wasn’t even contacted about it. It’s lucky thing I had a copy of the article open in another tab. I just copied it into Pages then uploaded to my WordPress blog.
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I would love a link to your article....
 
I wish I understood this stuff a bit better, but I don't. So, here's my situation. I currently run Windows 7 on my Intel iMac using VMWare. I need this to run a complex Windows based program for my job, and it runs very well with VMWare fusion (the app will also run under Windows 10). Will this new version of Parallels (or a future VMWare update) allow me to install Windows 10 and run my needed app? Thanks so much.
 
BobSc said:
I wish I understood this stuff a bit better, but I don't. So, here's my situation. I currently run Windows 7 on my Intel iMac using VMWare. I need this to run a complex Windows based program for my job, and it runs very well with VMWare fusion (the app will also run under Windows 10). Will this new version of Parallels (or a future VMWare update) allow me to install Windows 10 and run my needed app? Thanks so much.
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I got the impression Windows for ARM will only run X86 apps from the windows store, nothing outside. If this is incorrect please let us know.
 
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Scary Spice said:
This is a major bummer for me. I miss being able to spin up a macOS instance and test some stuff I don't want to hose my production workstation with. I have not even seen mention that this is on the road map.
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One reason I appreciate VMware on my Intel iMac. I can run all the way back to snow Leopard in a Mac OS X VM. For me testing is a reason, but mostly to revisit the legacy versions just for fun time to time since newer hardware is limited to what will run natively as the host.
 
jdb8167 said:
You can run x86-64 version of Windows in QEmu on a M1 but it is quite slow. One estimate was that it had a 40x slowdown. Probably not too interesting.
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I tried doing this yesterday on an M1 MBA and I can confirm this slowdown, and that it may be even worse. The "getting a few things ready" step spun for something like *six hours*. It may be a bug in the emulator, it may be slowdown, it may be the emulator's immaturity (*emulating* x86_64, compared to *virtualizing* it, is not as popular a use case). Ultimately, I'm not invested or interested in and don't want or need Windows. It was an idle curiosity to see if it'd work. After spinning for six hours I'd had enough and stopped trying. I should mention I was using the RC2 built from source, unpatched, from the qemu site, so others may have a different experience.
 
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The only OSes running on M1 are Big Sur and Windows 10 for ARM via Parallels.
 
macizcool said:
Thank you for the clarification! I was under the impression that it was impossible. I definitely won't hold my breath, ARM Windows sounds much more promising.
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You may be confusing virtualization with emulation. There's a tradeoff: emulation is slower, but you can run any software for any OS / hardware with it. Ever emulate an old video game system? It's like that. Super Mario Bros wasn't written for your M1 or Intel Mac, but you can run it by emulating an entire NES. Virtualiation is different; it uses hardware acceleration (specific, optimized features in your CPU) to run software (like an OS) on your computer that's *written for the same type of hardware*. This is what VirtualBox does, this is what Parallels does. It *virtualizes*. It doesn't *emulate*. This is why you can't use Parallels on an M1 Mac to run the x86 Windows OS. The software doesn't have code to simulate an x86 computer. Yes, M1 Macs are very similar to Intel Macs, but not in the ways that matter for virtualization.
 
macizcool said:
Can someone explain why it's impossible to emulate x86 on an M1 processor? VirtualPC was able to do it on a PowerPC processor.
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It's not impossible; in fact, UTM for macOS does it. You can run virtually any processor platform in emulated virtualization through QEMU, which is the back-end of UTM, but it's very slow and really not worth the time.

Windows on ARM (which is what people are talking about running through Parallels) has an experimental x86 emulation feature, however it's slow and unrefined. That said, most x86 apps (if not all) will run quicker in emulation through a Windows on ARM virtual machine in Parallels than they'll ever run through an entirely-emulated x86 Windows virtual machine on UTM/QEMU.
 
Macintosh IIvx said:
Hmmm, thought Microsoft only offered the ARM version of Windows to OEM.
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Right now you can get it through their early access program. Not sure about the future though. I wouldn’t be very happy if I bought Parallels and Microsoft denies access to Windows on Arm in the future. It is surprising that Parallels is releasing without resolving this. Of course Parallels is also working with Linux.
 
jdb8167 said:
Unlike Parallels they didn’t seem to be working on it early. I don’t know if Apple invited them like they did with Parallels or they declined but when the M1 was introduced they had a post on Twitter saying that they were considering doing an M1 version. So if they decided to do it, they are still far behind Parallels.
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I caught that post on Twitter as well. I wonder why they are behind though, just not interested anymore or did they hit a snag? I read something on Reddit from one of their employees that they are not allowed to talk about future products. Interesting.
 
Mac_tech said:
I caught that post on Twitter as well. I wonder why they are behind though, just not interested anymore or did they hit a snag? I read something on Reddit from one of their employees that they are not allowed to talk about future products. Interesting.
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Unlike most MacOS software, VM software isn’t going to just be a recompile. Part of it is the changes Apple made to Big Sur and the new requirement that you must use their hypervisor. But VMWare has that working so there must be more probably to do with drivers for Windows and Linux. Or maybe they aren’t willing to release with Microsoft’s current silence on releasing Windows on Arm unless you are an OEM.
 
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BobSc said:
I wish I understood this stuff a bit better, but I don't. So, here's my situation. I currently run Windows 7 on my Intel iMac using VMWare. I need this to run a complex Windows based program for my job, and it runs very well with VMWare fusion (the app will also run under Windows 10). Will this new version of Parallels (or a future VMWare update) allow me to install Windows 10 and run my needed app? Thanks so much.
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Not yet because Microsoft doesn't have an end user version of Windows 10 for Arm. There are ways to get the OEM version but I don't think I'd run a production process on it.
 
If you’re looking to use (not emulate) Windows 10 on ARM and don’t fancy paying Parallels £70 for the privilege. There are alternatives like UTM £10 (standalone app, from the App Store, no daemons) that can emulate Windows 10 on ARM for much cheaper, and without the arguably unnecessary status-bar-real-estate-taking feature-fluff such as Toolbox.

(Last version of Parallels I used was around ~ v9 - v11? It was a long time ago so could have improved or gotten worse since then)

If you’re looking to emulate, and not pay anything at all then qemu can also do this with a Windows 10 ARM disk image.

Edit: UTM can also emulate x86 as well as virtualise native ARM apparently.
 
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icwhatudidthere said:
Not yet because Microsoft doesn't have an end user version of Windows 10 for Arm. There are ways to get the OEM version but I don't think I'd run a production process on it.
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If an end user version of Windows 10 for Arm does become available, will it be able to run any x86 program or will the program have to be revised? Thanks.
 
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