Rosetta Won't Support x86 Virtualization Apps Running Windows

[Tech198]

Over the last 10 years we've had Windows on our laptops. We use it less and less. Then owning a cheap Win laptop or getting one from work sort of became standard. I wonder how many people are still booting into Windows on a Mac? We were pretty regularly 2 years ago. But it's almost odd how it doesn't seem to matter anymore.

Why would we, when VM has come up better, even to the game where you can run 3D games perfectly fine, thank to years of performance improvements and less heavy on resources, support for Direct 9x etc..

The only thing you really would nee Bootcamp for in running DurectX11 > .....games or for some cpu cycle ones/tasks.

with the overhead in VM's, you can't CPU cycle based...

 

[Fowl]

If I could run Windows on a thumb computer plugged in to a Mac and have it run in a separate window as in Parallels, that would work for me. If I could run virtual machines the same way off a thumb computer, that would be good too. If I could run virtual machines off a hackintoshed thumb computer, that would take care of everything (except some convenience and some speed).

 

[konqerror]

Intel already produces several ARM Cortex-based processors.

100% of Intel's ARM chips were due to other companies and historically, they were gotten rid of.

Intel got Xscale from Digital as part of an antitrust settlement, then sold it off to Marvell. Intel had ARM cores in their cellular chipsets, and those were migrated to x86. Intel got a MIPS core in their cable modems from TI and changed that to an Atom.

It remains to be seen whether they're going to force x86 down the throats of ex-Altera customers.

 

[deconstruct60]

The good ol' generic developer. It's true there's a lot of the industry that shifted to Macs as it was a great place for a POSIX-compliant system to develop any sort of scripted language, or Java, or Go these days. But that's not the Mac's developer bread-and-butter, it's iOS/iPad OS development. The architecture shift makes no difference at all to them. And now that the frameworks for mobile and Mac are basically synonymous, as long as they have them, they have macOS app developers. The platform will be just fine.

The mac "bread and butter" is selling more Macs. Developers who buy for other platforms aren't materially different than Doctors or Lawyers. They buy the system which matters. there are probably a higher number of folks who buy to develop for other platforms than there are 'pure' ( 100% full time) Mac developers. ( If go to a Linux or open source gathering you'll see a substantial number of Macs among the folks sponsored by companies with developer equipment budgets that aren't unusually small. )

Apple talks alot about their "Pros" category and a substantive amount of that is developers. (more than just Mac developers)

I really don't see why anyone would think Apple wants or needs to keep non-Apple platform developers around on their platform, but it's largely irrelevant.

If they are not around then they don't buy Macs. Apple needs fewer Macs sold?

Apple has 'burnt off' some user communities. Folks looking for a $2,500-4,500 Mac Pro have been tossed by the wayside for fewer units at higher margins. Apple can do that in the developer space also.

The fact that the demo of Linux ( ARM instance ) runing on Parallels on Apple Silicon made the demo is very illustrative that this isn't super duper small activity. Apple is pointing to instances of other operating system layered compile to ARM and layered in a virtual environment is something they want to support.

The real issue is how many of those other OS can get traction on other ARM systems else. VMs for Amazon/Azure/Google/etc cloud deployment probably are going to pick up over time. Amazon's Graviton 2 instances are competitive performance at lower cost. That is probably going to get more customers over the next two years. Azure will probably get ARM instances late Fall when more widely available server chips arrive

 

[mo5214]

I don't know if I am qualified to speculate about this (I don't really do devOps, just mostly sitting on the sidelines).
Have you heard of this neat little app called UTM on iOS?
It's a fork of QEMU (a popular System emulator), and has been around in the iOS Jailbreak/Sideload scene for sometime.
link: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM

Here it is in action playing Half-Life using software rendering emulating an x86, running on winXP, on the 2018-19 iPad Pros:

Here it is running PPC Version of Leopard Emulating a G4 mac:

From what I see it is getting about 30 fps with the whole system emulation with software rendering, on arguably 17-22 year old software (Half-Life was released in 1998, WinXP-64bit edition was in 2003-2004 as a rebadge version of Windows Server 2003)

The DTK running Shadows of the Tomb Raider shown during WWDC are showing roughly 28-30fps from the looks of it also. This is on Medium settings, using Metal API, and integrated GPU in the A12Z SoC.

Given the power/thermal budget difference between of the iPad Pro and the Mac Mini Form factor in the DTK, the chip might be able to scale its frequency more aggressively to run faster than possible on the iPad Pro. Keep it mind that A12Z does not reflect anything that Apple might have up their pipeline since they are not power limited to iPad-sized devices anymore.

Also, due to the open-source nature of QEMU. It might be possible to make a "virtual graphics device" that would translate directX/OpenGL calls into Metal (Note that Parallels has already similar things in their v15 version).

The limitations might rather be licensing issues of Intel's proprietary AVX, and AVX-512 instructions from what I read around, and software that requires them (Note that AVX-512 appeared on Haswell and later Intel CPUs), and/or Apple's own business decisions.

Now I don't have any idea of what kind of performance numbers regarding emulating x86_64 or PPC instructions on QEMU or other emulation systems and I am likely won't since I am unlikely to throw wads of cash for a DTK that may not reflect the true potential of what might be in their pipeline (remember the performance delta between the 3.6 Ghz Pentium 4s in the Intel DTK vs Core Series in the shipping products) just to test a few things and then return it later. Let's hope some people who get their hands on them do try to run these kind of software and benchmark it throughly for us.

Even with the performance being "OK-ish" there is still issue of passing through all the other devices/subsystems to the emulated machines in order for it to be of "daily-driver" quality. This is where different users have different requirements. (speed, latency, interfaces support, graphics capability, driver issues) It remains to be seen if anyone is willing to put the engineering into something that might be deemed "not economically viable" in the eyes of some companies.

This might be where Open-Source Movement comes into play though. I hope that there are people waiting to see what Apple's new chips can do once they ship.

Again, pure speculation on my part. Apologies If I get something wrong.

PS: check these performance delta

Test: 3DMark03 CPU score for Pentium 4 650, T1200

www.cpu-world.com

Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (Socket M) vs Pentium 4 650

www.cpu-world.com

It might be indicative the progress of the Perfomance Deltas of early DTKs to later Products (Pentium 4 in DTK, First mini runs Core Solo, later desktops run Core 2 Duos)

 

[deconstruct60]

....
As a Mac user going back to the mid 1990's? I'd say it's safe to bet that someone will tackle making Windows work in emulation on an ARM Mac. They did it with VirtualPC on the old PPC processors, and that was just as difficult to pull off. But it's likely not to run very quickly or efficiently. Most likely unsuitable for any gaming beyond casual 2D stuff.

It is bit more difficult now with relatively wide usage of hardware virtualization support. Windows 10 runs some stuff "boxed" in a virutalize instance. Which means emulator has to deal with virtualization on virtualization (and maybe another virtualzation on top of that). Similar issues will pop up if trying to track the AVX flavors out to AVX512 and the new ML (added this year bfloat16 ) and Tensor stuff that Intel is adding next year.

The *big* takeaway here is that Apple is finally deciding to break down some of the barriers that always kept iOS devices separate from Macs. Moving forward, your new Macbook is essentially an "iPad Pro Plus". While games written native to run in OS X are few and far between, there are plenty for iOS which would look and run great on a big monitor and ARM based Mac. A lot of other iOS apps could be slightly re-written to make Mac versions that work better with keyboards and mouse pointers -- meaning voila! The Mac has a software library about as big as Windows does in short order.

Quantity versus quality. The flotsam of iOS apps pouring into the Mac may be decent to pump up Apple's services revenue but may not help users all that much. iPhone apps that were never ported to the iPad will be even more clunky on a Mac screen.

Yes the Mac will be an "iPad Pro Plus" but there is lots of apps store stuff that doesn't work so hot (many that do work but there is lots of 'junk' in app store also. ).

 

[omenatarhuri]

Gaming on Macs will be interesting to see. On the other hand porting Windows games probably becomes more difficult but on the other hand porting iOS games becomes super easy. So in the end it might even help.

 

[deconstruct60]

No, kernel extensions aren’t directly related to virtualization.

Pragmatically yes. If going to provision virutalized networking . Paravirtulized interfaces. etc.
Can do without those but probably won't be meeting expectations of most advanced users.

 

[cmaier]

Gaming on Macs will be interesting to see. On the other hand porting Windows games probably becomes more difficult but on the other hand porting iOS games becomes super easy. So in the end it might even help.

I predict that Apple is going to surprise us with some big-name ports.

 

[Kyanar]

Gaming on Macs will be interesting to see. On the other hand porting Windows games probably becomes more difficult but on the other hand porting iOS games becomes super easy. So in the end it might even help.

It's a massive boost to engine developers like Unity3D, Epic (Unreal Engine), etc with "write once run anywhere" code.

 

[deconstruct60]

Isn’t Thunderbolt essentially a PCI-e bus on a cable with USB-C connectors?
]

No. Thunderbotl is a different protocol and packaging of data. It "carriers" PCI-e data traffic but it isn't "external" PCi-e.

I could imagine a relatively small dongle sticking out the side of your MacBook or back of you iMac that has an Intel processor, to which Parallels would hand off processing of the Windows software code. Such a device would be similar to the PC Compatibility Card of old. It could be substantially less expensive, however. An Intel Compute Stick can be had for around $150.

And the compute stick performance is what? (not very high).

If it is a Thunderbolt device it doesn't have to be that small, but also would scale in cost with performance.

Parallels wouldn't be "handing off" as much as working with an "application server" like facilty that Parallel has for running Windows on a server and connecting with a remote client on just about any OS. Only the "networking" here would be akin to just running a virtualized ethernet over the provisioned PCI-e link.

It is doabl but basically paying for a second computer. Can just buy a second computer.

 

[travelsheep]

luckily Windows laptops start at $ 299 , might even be cheaper, portable hardware that's up to par

 

[deconstruct60]

....

But if Parallels and VMware finds a way to run « natively » within their engine x86 OSes, all these fears will vanish.

But the core of the Parallels and VMware modern engines are based on the x86_64 virtualization instructions being present. Rosetta doesn't do those instructions. So........ they'd need new engines. Probably just for the macOS.

The "old school" emulation ( 'virtulization' ) programs to do some more overt trapping of low level calls, but that isn't fast and low overhead. As the CPUs provided better support for virtualization the VM applications got more dependent upon those facilities. ( latest versions aren't going to run on really old x86 chips from pre 2008 or so).

 

[quietstormSD]

This is not good for enterprise customers that rely on Windows but want to use Mac hardware.

 

[FlyingDutch]

Well, the transition process won’t be painless, that’s for sure.
I never had to run Windows on my Mac, but for some this will be a showstopper.

 

[cmaier]

Well, the transition process won’t be painless, that’s for sure.
I never had to run Windows on my Mac, but for some this will be a showstopper.

Well, i hear tell that there are other companies out there that make machines that can run this windows of which you speak.

 

[FlyingDutch]

Even in the Intel era, it was already a tough world for Mac users hoping beyond hope that game developers would make Mac versions of their games.... Now I bet we can kiss goodbye to gaming on Mac forever.

Gaming on a Mac never was an option for thermals and poor GPU choices available.
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Well, i hear tell that there are other companies out there that make machines that can run this windows of which you speak.

For sure, but if you can’t see the difference from having one computer to run both or the need to buy two computers, well, it’s entirely your fault.

 

[deconstruct60]

If you think a truckload of those A12Z DTKs are not at Microsoft in Redmond, you are sadly mistaken. I can guarantee that a year from now, you will have native Windows 10 running on Apple silicon along with Office 365. But, I don't know about other applications beyond Microsoft's own. But hopefully it will happen.

Unless things have changed. the macOS app development team is not in Redmond. Microsoft has a decent size campus in Mountain View, CA . Just down the highway 85 from Apple.

As far as Windows goes, that is somewhat backwards. It Apple's job to get hardware specific drivers to Microsoft for Windows. It is not Microsoft's job to chase after deviations from standards of each and every hardware vendor. Apple and Microsoft will need to work out a signed authentication key/code for the finished app but Microsoft has their own ARM systems ( Surface X publically) and the vast bulk of Windows on ARM development will be done on those.

 

[cmaier]

Gaming on a Mac never was an option for thermals and poor GPU choices available.
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For sure, but if you can’t see the difference from having one computer to run both or the need to buy two computers, well, it’s entirely your fault.

Oh, I see the advantage, but I don’t see any reason Apple would care. They don’t really have a vested long term interest anymore in making machines for people who want to run windows.
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Unless things have changed. the macOS app development team is not in Redmond. Microsoft has a decent size campus in Mountain View, CA . Just down the highway 85 from Apple.

As far as Windows goes, that is somewhat backwards. It Apple's job to get hardware specific drivers to Microsoft for Windows. It is not Microsoft's job to chase after deviations from standards of each and every hardware vendor. Apple and Microsoft will need to work out a signed authentication key/code for the finished app but Microsoft has their own ARM systems ( Surface X publically) and the vast bulk of Windows on ARM development will be done on those.

Is that what they do in that MS building at the 85/101 interchange? Always wondered.

 

[mannyvel]

For anyone that really needs x86_64, well, x86 boxes are cheap. I use VMWare Fusion on my MBP, but I also have a 16-core Win10 box with 128GB of RAM and 20TB of disk under my desk. That box cost about $450 in total. Lack of virtualization is not as much of a showstopper as you'd think.

 

[cmaier]

For anyone that really needs x86_64, well, x86 boxes are cheap. I use VMWare Fusion on my MBP, but I also have a 16-core Win10 box with 128GB of RAM and 20TB of disk under my desk. That box cost about $450 in total. Lack of virtualization is not as much of a showstopper as you'd think.

Especially with a kvm switch or VNC.

 

[aaronhead14]

This is a massive problem for many pro users who mainly use macOS but also rely on certain virtualized Windows apps. This is very common among professionals, and Apple is abandoning us.

 

[cmaier]

This is a massive problem for many pro users who mainly use macOS but also rely on certain virtualized Windows apps. This is very common among professionals, and Apple is abandoning us.

Yep, they are. Some people will have to use two machines or switch to windows or Unix. But mac users who remain will end up with much better machines, and many new customers will come along.

 

[Westside guy]

I will miss macOS, but at this point I can get a similar experience (for most of what I need, anyway) on an x86 "Windows" laptop running a modern Linux distro. Wine can pretty much meet my Windows needs nowadays. The other main reason I went to Mac originally was Adobe, but I've been cutting Adobe out of my life since they went subscription only.

Who knows, though, this 2015 MacBook Pro might still run for another half decade - we'll see who the remaining major players are when this finally bites the big one.

 

[johngwheeler]

I can't see what good can come out of this. Except the case that are extremely faster than the Intel chips, the whole process does sound like counter-intuitive for everyone involved.

...except for Apple, of course! They get full control of their production schedules and probably reduce CPU and support chip costs.

I think Apple will need to demonstrate that real-world performance is equal or better than Intel-based Macs, with an added advantage of better battery life for laptops.
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OK, this is click-bait as hell. All that's going to happen is Parallels and VirtualBox will release versions that run on the new custom Apple silicon. You'll still be able to run your VM's, you'll just have to wait for the apps to be updated to native binaries.

I'm not sure it is that simple. Parallels, VMWare, and VirtualBox on Intel Mac can run VMs for different OSes that *also* run on x86 hardware, e.g. Linux for x86 or Windows. The hypervisor depends on the underlying x86 processor.

AFAIK, type 1 or 2 hypervisors can not run an ARM-Linux VM on an x86 host (Windows or Mac), or x86 VM (Linux or Windows) on an ARM-based host. You would need some kind of emulation layer.