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 Snapdragon X laptops - does VMWare Workstation work?

Eivind Bakkestuen's profile image
Eivind Bakkestuen posted Jul 14, 2024 06:06 PM

Does the current windows x64 VMWare Workstation version run on the new Snapdragon X laptops? Any known limitations or problems? Please post if you have actual experience.

Duncan Epping's profile image
Broadcom Employee Duncan Epping posted Jul 15, 2024 07:36 AM

No it isn't supported, Snapdragon is an ARM processor, whereas Workstation is developed for x86 currently.

Eivind Bakkestuen's profile image
Eivind Bakkestuen posted Jul 16, 2024 05:00 AM

Adding to my original post; "not supported" isn't necessarily the same as "doesn't work". Windows on ARM (Snapdragon X) has x86 emulation, my question whether the emulation works for VMWare workstation stands.

Technogeezer's profile image
External Moderator Technogeezer posted Jul 16, 2024 09:53 AM

I wouldn’t bet on it working. Workstation’s drivers are only compiled as x64 code. Drivers for x64 won’t work on windows ARM (drivers must be compiled as ARM native code and don’t work under Microsoft’s translator).

I would also expect that if VMware does provide a version of Workstation compiled for ARM in the future, it will only run ARM architecture operating systems. If Microsoft’s translator is anything like Apple’s Rosetta 2 translator, it doesn’t support translating the monitor mode instruction set and HAL needed for an x64 operating system to run under a hypervisor. 

The situation with Workstation is like what happened with Fusion when Apple announced its ARM based Apple Silicon Macs. Fusion had to be re-written to run on the new Macs. It would not run under Apple’s Rosetta 2 x64 translator, and will not run VMs built on an x64 cpu. 

You may wish to indicate your interest in running Workstation on Microsoft’s ARM PCs as a product enhancement. 

Babatunde Azeez's profile image
Babatunde Azeez posted Oct 25, 2024 12:33 PM

Do you know of any virtualisation tools that works on snapdragon X Elite?

Technogeezer's profile image
External Moderator Technogeezer posted Oct 26, 2024 11:22 AM

@Babatunde Azeez - 

Windows:

  • Hyper-V should run under Windows 11 ARM. 
  • Not sure if QEMU is ported to native ARM code for Windows, or if QEMU will work under Windows 11 ARM's Prism x64 "emulator".

Linux:

  • QEMU/GNOME Boxes/libvirt should all be available for arm64 Linux distros. 

As far as I can tell, Virtual Box does not run on ARM CPUs for either Windows or Linux. 

Just note that you'll need Intel full chip emulation (such as QEMU) to run Intel guest operating systems on an ARM CPU.