CodeWeavers gets Windows apps running on Apple Silicon
The developers of CrossOver have announced that their latest version can run both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows applications on the new Apple Silicon M1 Macs.
Windows games running on Apple Silicon
As other virtualization companies work to transition to Apple Silicon M1, CodeWeavers has announced that their CrossOver software can already run Windows games and apps. The company says that there is more work to do but it is functioning under Apple's Rosetta 2.
As well as tweeting the announcement, CodeWeaver's Jeremy White has written a blog that briefly describes what they've tried out so far. "We also installed the beta version of Big Sur 11.1, because we know it has some critical fixes to Rosetta [2]," he wrote.
"After we did that, we were able to fire up CrossOver and install and run a wide range of Windows applications," continued White. "I can't tell you how cool that is; there is so much emulation going on under the covers. Imagine -- a 32-bit Windows Intel binary, running in a 32-to-64 bridge in Wine/CrossOver on top of macOS, on an ARM CPU that is emulating x86 -- and it works!"
White does note that, "it isn't perfect." For one example, he mentioned that "Team Fortress 2 showed some lag" and said, "I think we've got some work to do on that front."
Following the announcement on Twitter, CodeWeavers said that it is compiling a list of Windows apps that work. They also answered a question about older version of Internet Explorer, saying "big nope on old version of IE."
Of the other major companies producing Windows software solutions, Parallels has said that it is "excited to see" the benefits of Apple Silicon M1. It has yet to announce a date when its software will be updated to run on it, but the company has made "tremendous progress."
CrossOver differs from Parallels and other virtualization solutions in that it does not require an entire Windows install to run. It isn't yet clear how this may simplify or complicate the issues for virtualization or emulation that not having an Intel chip in the Mac induces.
Windows games running on Apple Silicon
As other virtualization companies work to transition to Apple Silicon M1, CodeWeavers has announced that their CrossOver software can already run Windows games and apps. The company says that there is more work to do but it is functioning under Apple's Rosetta 2.
We're making it official: @codeweavers CrossOver/Wine runs 32- and 64-bit Windows apps/games on Apple Silicon Macs!
And it works today!
Big thanks to the Rosetta folks at Apple and everyone at CodeWeavers for their hard work on this.https://t.co/yVnPkV5DDQ pic.twitter.com/RUi2X0vmET-- Brendan Shanks (@realmrpippy)
As well as tweeting the announcement, CodeWeaver's Jeremy White has written a blog that briefly describes what they've tried out so far. "We also installed the beta version of Big Sur 11.1, because we know it has some critical fixes to Rosetta [2]," he wrote.
"After we did that, we were able to fire up CrossOver and install and run a wide range of Windows applications," continued White. "I can't tell you how cool that is; there is so much emulation going on under the covers. Imagine -- a 32-bit Windows Intel binary, running in a 32-to-64 bridge in Wine/CrossOver on top of macOS, on an ARM CPU that is emulating x86 -- and it works!"
White does note that, "it isn't perfect." For one example, he mentioned that "Team Fortress 2 showed some lag" and said, "I think we've got some work to do on that front."
Following the announcement on Twitter, CodeWeavers said that it is compiling a list of Windows apps that work. They also answered a question about older version of Internet Explorer, saying "big nope on old version of IE."
Of the other major companies producing Windows software solutions, Parallels has said that it is "excited to see" the benefits of Apple Silicon M1. It has yet to announce a date when its software will be updated to run on it, but the company has made "tremendous progress."
CrossOver differs from Parallels and other virtualization solutions in that it does not require an entire Windows install to run. It isn't yet clear how this may simplify or complicate the issues for virtualization or emulation that not having an Intel chip in the Mac induces.
Comments
This is basically a temporary solution. By the time Rosetta 2 is removed we’ll have many other options.
Apparently Parallels is working on a solution and there’s the QEMU (qemu.org) project, which is cross platform already. And there’s an iOS an app called UTM (getutm.app) that could probably be moved to M1 Macs fairly easily.
I liken WINE somewhat to the way I got my ancient Northgate 101 mechanical keyboard and PS2 mouse to work with a Raspberry Pi. I chained together a full sized DIN-to-PS2 adapter to a PS2-to-USB adapter that handles both the keyboard and mouse. It works because the mechanical interfaces are translated by connector adapters and the electrical signals are translated by a little controller embedded in the PS2-to-USB adapter. Looks kludgy but works perfectly.
Parallels and VMWare emulate/virtualize the entire operating system on the foreign host. This sounds like it would be rather slow, but most Intel chips built over the past decade and a half have silicon level assist that improves parts of the virtualization stack significantly. Also, most modern operating systems including macOS, Unix, Linux, and Windows have various types of abstractions around the underlying hardware from applications, i.e., hypervisors, that greatly improve virtualization. All of this underlying hardware and software assist for virtualization greatly improves the performance and robustness of virtualization on these platforms.
Did I mention WINE is not an emulator? In the case of Apple Silicon, Rosetta 2 is providing the required x86 emulation/virtualization.
Meanwhile, Parallels and VMware emulate most of a whole computer, except for the processor. You have to install a whole operating system in them. x86 instruction privilege levels are tracked in "rings", with lower numbers being more privileged. Ring 0 was the most privileged for a while, then they started adding negative rings with VT-x, VT-d, and so on (the "silicon level assist" mentioned above). Windows now tries to grab all the negative rings on boot to prevent malware from grabbing them. I suspect the reason Rosetta doesn't officially support virtualization is related to processor support for these negative rings. Specifically, I bet Apple doesn't feel like faking ring 0 and below, and without faking the hardware support, performance would be really bad. It may not even work at all, because the Intel processors Apple has shipped have always supported a few of the negative rings. It's possible Parallels and VMware don't have their own software emulation for those unsupported instructions in the Mac versions of their products.
It's all emulation, or virtualization, or pathological lying. The difference is what is being lied about.
My point is that showing WINE support on Apple Silicon does not really demonstrate that virtualization vendors like VMWare, Parallels, and VirtualBox are in any way closer to getting a true x86 dependent OS level virtualization solution on Apple Silicon. CodeWeavers is demonstrating something that they've always been able to do on top of real x86 hardware. The only difference here is that they're piggybacking on top of Apple's Rosetta 2. Apple is doing all the heavy lifting.
VMWare, Parallels, and VirtualBox have a lot of work to do. This demo doesn't change a thing and doesn't move the bar. Perhaps they may not be able to do it optimally with M1 and will have to wait for a later M-series SoC. What I will say is that over the last couple of decades virtualization on x86 platforms has always been a really big deal and has heavily influenced silicon and OS designs. The only question is whether there is sufficient momentum to sustain this with Apple Silicon. We've already seen that Unix, Linux, and Windows have committed to ARM at various levels, but x86 isn't going away anytime soon.
Personally, I'd be happy with a coprocessor or sidecar approach, like a full x86 machine-on-a-stick that plugs into USB4/TB and is on a virtual network with the Apple Silicon host machine and remoting into the sidecar machine. This allows Apple to keep its silicon as clean as possible and avoid backward compatibility and legacy baggage.
WINE is just an alternative API layer (aka compatibility layer). It does not emulate the OS at all. It takes Windows apps and hooks standard Windows API calls into their API's. It is very similar to how NextStep apps were able to run under different operating systems. It also why Rosetta is so fast, because the macOS APIs exist on both Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs...
The model is...
Application -> API -> Operating System
As long as the application only uses what's available in the API... as you move those API's to different operating systems, those applications should be able to make the move as well.
I’ve been using Rosetta 2 for a couple of days now and it is spectacularly good. Outside of the initial launch of an application you can’t tell whether you are running a native Arm binary or a Rosetta 2 translation. It looks like Apple spent a lot of time on Rosetta 2 and might want to keep it around indefinitely. It’s only going to get better with future updates to Apple Silicon.
Makes sense. They are doing app level translation including JIT (just in time) compiling code that uses JIT, then caching the results. This means that subsequent invocations of the same app/code are effectively running natively.