What happens when two worlds collide? We may soon be able to find out, as a new project is in development that aims to make running Windows 11 natively on an Apple M1 chip a real possibility.
If you want to run Microsoft’s latest and greatest OS on Apple hardware, you have two choices. One is to run the operating system via a solution like Parallels, and the other is to use a Windows 10 hack to run it natively and upgrade to the newest version.
But as far as Microsoft is concerned, the company has already clarified that it was unlikely to ever support Windows 11 on Mac or M1 powered machines.
This only left room for enthusiasts to jump in, and it appears we have our first contender.
Developer Arminder Singh is working on a project to run Windows 11 natively on a range of Apple silicon, including the powerful M1 chip. But these are very early days, as he clarifies that several challenges must be overcome.
His words:
“Contrary to how it may appear on the surface, Apple’s chips are architecturally very different from standard ARM64 chips from companies like Qualcomm or MediaTek and a lot of hardware enablement needs to be done as a result. Thankfully a lot of work has already been done in this area for Linux through the Asahi Linux project
This is not going to be a trivial project to finish, there’s a lot of Apple specific oddities I must account for and things I need to do to ensure the M1 is able to boot Windows in a stable way.”
The major issue is the proprietary interrupt controller that the fruity company uses, conveniently dubbed the Apple Interrupt Controller (AIC). The second problem is the M1’s Input-Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU), which supports 16K pages instead of 8K.
With these roadblocks in place, there is no guarantee that this project will succeed. Hence no ETA, at the moment.
But as mentioned above, the Asahi Linux project is a similar one that aims to run Linux on Apple Silicon, and it is far ahead in this endeavor.
So, there is hope yet.
