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Parallels 16 for M1 Macs Now Available Through Technical Preview Program

adbe said:
No, it really is. How many people want to run ARM based Windows? You want windows because you need to run windows applications. That almost certainly at this point means X86 applications. And Windows 10 emulating X86 inside a VM is going to miserable.
Click to expand...
I think there will also be a problem with printer/scanner drivers etc?
 
Virtualisation is something that will improve over time even on these early chips. Might be something that can be accelerated or supported better in the future as the new processor range matures too so don’t write anything off just yet. There is a reason they released the 13” basic pro and air first, not everything for pros is quite there yet.
 
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adbe said:
No, it really is. How many people want to run ARM based Windows? You want windows because you need to run windows applications. That almost certainly at this point means X86 applications. And Windows 10 emulating X86 inside a VM is going to miserable.
Click to expand...
We've already seen it and it didn't look bad at all
 
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I sense a business opportunity for running Windows VMs in the cloud...

I'm a reverse engineer and I must have Windows 7+ VMs I can test malware on. If I can't do it on my Mac, well, I'm willing to pay a third party...
 
Well it does run at least. ARM Windows 10 Insider Preview running on M1 MacBook Pro
 

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WilburMercer said:
I sense a business opportunity for running Windows VMs in the cloud...

I'm a reverse engineer and I must have Windows 7+ VMs I can test malware on. If I can't do it on my Mac, well, I'm willing to pay a third party...
Click to expand...
MS already sells this with Azure VMs.

Azure Virtual Machines | Microsoft Azure

Discover Azure Virtual Machines by Microsoft Azure for scalable, on-demand computing resources for Linux and Windows virtual machines.
azure.microsoft.com
 
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adbe said:
No, it really is. How many people want to run ARM based Windows? You want windows because you need to run windows applications. That almost certainly at this point means X86 applications. And Windows 10 emulating X86 inside a VM is going to miserable.
Click to expand...

Over time, more ARM-based Windows apps will appear. (For example, while .NET Framework had limited support for ARM, .NET Core support is a fair amount better.)

And while emulating x86 inside a VM is going to have limitations, doing exactly that with a makeshift QEMU-based solution without any optimization whatsoever is actually 3% faster than any released Intel Mac:

(edit) sorry. That shows an ARM version of Geekbench running in a VM. I could've sworn I saw an x86 result somewhere as well.

mspoweruser.com

Geekbench 5 score shows Apple M1 processor runs virtualized Windows 10 on ARM faster than Surface Pro X 2

We reported earlier that developer Alexander Graf has managed to get Windows 10 on ARM running on his Apple M1-powered Macbook by running it in a patched virtual machine which addresses the ARM processor directly. This allowed him to bypass any driver issues and still have a very performant...
mspoweruser.com


Presumably, Parallels and/or Microsoft will be able to optimize that even further.

filmak said:
I think there will also be a problem with printer/scanner drivers etc?
Click to expand...

Yes.
 
Last edited:
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WilburMercer said:
I sense a business opportunity for running Windows VMs in the cloud...

I'm a reverse engineer and I must have Windows 7+ VMs I can test malware on. If I can't do it on my Mac, well, I'm willing to pay a third party...
Click to expand...
Is it ok for you to be depended from an installation in an uncontrolled from you location? is it also secure enough?
no internet -> no VMs in this case...
 
Madmic23 said:
I'm going to release a competing emulator that also doesn't run Windows. In fact, mine won't run anything! Success!
Click to expand...

That's the big defining parameter though, up to this point, Parallels isn't emulation, it's hardware virtualisation. Accessing the hardware components directly to allow a guest operating system to be run. But we already know that.

Now though, in order to achieve x86 code execution, there will have to be a new emulation layer written from scratch.
Unless they're aiming for some kind of binary translation, in the style of Rosetta. Though again, not a simple undertaking.

Admittedly, I haven't looked into the possibility of them tapping Rosetta 2 in some way to take advantage of that binary translation, mostly because I'm not that desperate to run Windows on my Mac :D (I have a Win desktop as well.... for now).
 
adbe said:
No, it really is. How many people want to run ARM based Windows? You want windows because you need to run windows applications. That almost certainly at this point means X86 applications. And Windows 10 emulating X86 inside a VM is going to miserable.
Click to expand...
Nope, it's not going to be miserable, while slower than Rosetta, the speed is decent. Of course you want run a game in it.
 
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