Parallels Can Now Run x86 Windows and Linux On Apple Silicon Mac

Parallels Desktop now supports running 64-bit x86 operating systems on Apple Silicon Macs through its proprietary emulation engine, enabling users to run traditional Windows and Linux distributions. However, performance is said to be "really slow." How-To Geek reports: The latest Parallels Desktop 20.2 update adds early support for x86 emulation on Apple Silicon, allowing traditional x86 PC operating systems to work on newer Mac computers. There were already apps like UTM that could do it (most of them are based on QEMU), but this feature uses Parallels' "proprietary emulation engine" paired with Apple's built-in hypervisor. [...] Parallels on Apple Silicon can now "run existing x86_64 Windows 10, Windows 11*, Windows Server 2019/2022, and some Linux distributives with UEFI BIOS via Parallels Emulator." You can also create new Windows 10 21H2 and Windows Server 2022 virtual machines if needed.

There are some big limitations. You can only run 64-bit x86 operating systems -- sorry, FreeDOS fans -- but those 64-bit operating systems can run 32-bit applications. There's also no support for USB devices, nested virtualization (so WSL2 won't work), or the Parallels hypervisor. Performance will also be "really slow," since x86 instructions have to be translated to ARM. The company said, "Windows boot time is about 2-7 minutes, depending on your hardware. Windows operating system responsiveness is also low."

Codeweavers Crossover (Wine) does this already

[93 Escort Wagon]

It can run Windows apps, at least - and it can run 32-bit ones. Application launch time can be very, very slow... but, aside from the initial startup time, the apps seem to run pretty well.

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[martin-boundary]

Use the Turbo button to speed up your 32-bit apps, that's what it's there for:)

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[Holi]

You misunderstand the turbo button,

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[dhjdhj]

Meh, it looked so promising but, I tried it last year on a couple of regular windows apps and it seemed to work fine so I bought it. Found out pretty quickly that it’s not really that reliable beyond the few standard apps and a bunch of games. It failed miserably when I threw some real apps that I really needed, even after all the configuration options I tweaked wguided by their support. Given the price of Crossover, it would have been significantly cheaper to just buy an Intel NUC and access it remo

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[dbialac]

Crossover stopped focusing on applications and has instead focused on gaming on Linux because I think that's where they find the most sales. I stopped using it for that reason.

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[ls671]

Of course it's slow if what follows is correct:

Not sure this is done in hypervisor mode. How could it be? How could modern Apple CPU hypervise a amd64/intel? Hypervisor mode has to be build in the CPU. qemu is slow too when emulating CPUs different than the host CPU architecture thus, without hypervisor mode on the physical CPU crunching the data. Hypervisor mode only provides gains with the same CPU architectures and are not used otherwise. It provides gains by sending instructions directly to the physical

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[thegarbz]

Codeweavers Crossover can do nothing of the sort. You seem to not understand the difference between providing a app level compatibility layer (Crossover) and a VM hosted in a hypervisor.

They are fundamentally different in virtually every way and the existence or capabilities of one do not in any way have any influence on the existence and capabilities of the other.

UTM/Qemu?

[Bert64]

What does this provide that UTM/Qemu do not?
Qemu can run 32bit operating systems, and can also emulate platforms other than amd64 (there is a demo of sparc solaris on the utm site).

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[NewID_of_Ami.One]

It seems UTM will not do GPU emulation and therefore no 3D acceleration (DirectX/OpenGL) and that's the only reason i am still stuck on Parallels.

Though i don't need games, I assume that means slower apps as most use GPU these days and parallels runs windows even faster than any win laptop i have tried (maybe snapdragon elite x will be good enough. i hope) and integrates so well into macOS that i even ditched vmware fusion.

Anyone has recent experience with both UTM & Parallels?

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[Bert64]

UTM has GPU support, but drivers for windows are still a work in progress. Linux should be working already.

I'm not sure if GPU support in parallels would extend to emulated amd64 instances of windows?

We had this before...

[andyring]

The original Parallels would run on a PowerPC Mac and emulate x86 hardware. It also was excruciatingly slow.

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[R.Mo_Robert]

The original Parallels would run on a PowerPC Mac and emulate x86 hardware. It also was excruciatingly slow.

Are you sure? I only remember it doing virtualization, and this forum discussion [parallels.com] on their site suggests the same. (Maybe you're thinking of Microsoft Virtual PC?)

Run? Not really so I fixed the headline

[Holi]

x86 Windows and Linux Can Now Crawl in Parallels On Apple Silicon Mac.

Really?

[vbdasc]

supports running 64-bit x86 operating systems on Apple Silicon Macs

Does it support Windows XP x86-64? I very much doubt this.

(No, I didn't mean Itanium).

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[KlomDark]

Why wouldn't it? Might be some driver issues, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. Why you would want this these days, not sure, but I did run that back in the day. It was a good, but incomplete attempt to move up to 64 bit.

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[vbdasc]

Why wouldn't it?

UEFI?

minecraft

[awwshit]

You can build a CPU in minecraft too, but it might not be super useful in the real world.

Ooohhh Boyyyy!!

[KlomDark]

Wow, I can spend three times as much and get a slower way of running the apps I need. Apple is so brave, I think I just wet my pants!