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by strategarius 2268 days ago
I'm curious what Parallels going to do. Running Windows and Linux applications with almost native integration into OSX ecosystem worth a lot, especially with all benefits of hardware virtualization. In theory PC could be virtualized on ARM, however software virtualization only. Going to watch the process. In general, Windows and Linux support ARM as well, not sure if hardware virtualization for ARM exist though
4 comments
pmontra 2268 days ago
Maybe backend developers for Intel Linux servers will fire up a VM on AWS/Azure/Google and work there.

There will be some cross platform compatibility issues. Interpreted languages hide the CPU (think Python, Ruby, Node) but their extensions in C could need some extra work that not all of them require now.

On the other side there will be the rise of the ARM servers. Apple is notoriously not interested in running server farms for their customers but I expect that the big cloud providers will start offering ARM servers.

It could be the x86 developers to have to fire up an ARM VM on the cloud to be able to work in ARM Macs heavy teams.

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scarface74 2268 days ago
Packages with native dependencies already require a recompile to run between Windows and Linux. Right now, I write Python scripts on a Windows laptop, push the changes and the build server (well actually a Linux Docker container using AWS CodeBuild) builds and deploys the package to Linux servers.

Apple already has an x86 build chain that cross compiled to ARM.

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mappu 2268 days ago
> not sure if hardware virtualization for ARM exist though

Virtualization extensions have been available since the Cortex A15 or thereabouts.

Linux supports normal KVM on both ARM32 and ARM64 although there are mutterings about dropping support for ARM32.

In practice, the hypervisor is usually already grabbed by the platform (e.g. on Android/Snapdragon it's taken by the TrustZone driver and can't be used yourself, even if you rebuild the kernel with CONFIG_KVM).

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strategarius 2268 days ago
Interesting info, thanks. I also missed the point that Apple is going to design new CPU, they are definitely able to add any hardware virtualization instructions
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jbverschoor 2268 days ago
Why wouldn’t they be able to provide on-chip x86 emulation, exposed via hypervisor Framework? They can use that for backward compatibility for non-recompiled apps while supporting parallels/VMware

Also, the move to Catalina helps to check how fast app developers and users switch to new hardware.

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saagarjha 2268 days ago
Apple doesn’t have chips that support it, yet.
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