Parallels with ARM-based Macs?

I'm a software tester, mostly testing Windows software but occasionally needing to check things in our Mac releases. Up to now I've always run on Macs (Intel based) which I dual-boot between MacOS and Windows.

However... my Intel Mac is pretty old now and I'd like to update to an ARM based one. I've heard that Microsoft now offers ARM based versions of both Windows 10 and 11 but when I last looked into this, 3rd-perty hardware drivers were pretty much non-existent - so even essential stuff like sound just didn't work

What's the situation with Parallels? I'd assume it won't work either if it needs 3rd-party drivers but they aren't available yet??

 

I do not know about 3rd-party drivers, I think that would depend upon the accessories that you are attempting to connect to the virtual machine. The performance of Windows and Linux are as well as physical hardware, and in many cases better than actual computer hardware.

 

Many thnaks James. After a bit more searching this morning I came across a knowledgebase article here:- https://kb.parallels.com/130217#section2 which I gotta say, isn't very complimentary about trying to run Intel based Windows stuff on an ARM based Mac

The article's only a couple of months old but problems include a very slow boot-time (up to 7 minutes!) as well as no sound (which I already suspected) and even no USB (which surprised me...)

I think I'll leave it a while...

 

Yes, well emulation has always ran a little slow. The ARM version of Windows runs very well and more applications are being ported to ARM for better performance. Like Rosetta 2, Microsoft intel to ARM translation does seem to work mostly well. Depending on the applications that you use, the performance and functionality will vary. Personally I would not bother with emulation in the first place. I know that Microsoft has been working over the last thirteen years to port Windows from intel to ARM and their work has finally paid off, five years after Apple ported macOS from intel to ARM.

 

I did some more reading here and it seems that Microsoft has reached the stage now of supporting Intel apps from within Windows for ARM - so stuff that previously wouldn't work (such as sound apps) are mostly supported now. The main restrictions seem to be security apps and things like plugins, if they expect a recent version of OpenGL.

I've no idea what the performance is like but I imagine it'll be similar to MacOS intel apps running on ARM.