Microsoft: Prism x86 for Arm will be similar to Apple Rosetta

Microsoft claims that Prism x86 for Arm will be similar to Apple Rosetta, ensuring that much of the software and applications existing in the current version of the operating system will be able to run properly on next generation computers.

Even though some of them have already indicated that there will be a native version for Arm, such as the Chrome browser and Adobe Photoshop, most of them were produced with x86 CPUs in mind and doubts about their emulation began to emerge. After all, will the Snapdragon X Elite run the Windows x86 code well or not?

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To answer this question, Microsoft presented the new “Prism” emulation tool – which will arrive in the 24H2 update to Windows 11 and promises to convert x86 code into Arm. Although the concept is not new, many reviews pointed out that the emulation available until now was not good.

Microsoft’s comparison of Prism with Apple Rosetta 2 emulation is taken with doubt – considering that Apple did this masterfully in 2006, with its Arm-based chips replacing Intel x86 ones and bringing performance that surprised the public.

Besides, the name itself also revealed a good idea from Apple, with Rosetta being named after the “Rosetta Stone” – an ancient manuscript written in stone, with three versions of the same text in Greek, Egyptian and Demotic and served as the basis for understand demotic texts and also ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

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According to Microsoft itself, the Prism tool will even bring a boost to older Arm-based devices.

The powerful new Prism emulation engine delivers twice the performance compared to the current Surface Pro 9 with 5G

They also claim that Prism will run codes 10% to 20% faster on existing Arms chips than their previous emulation tool – giving older devices a bigger boost too, like the Surface Pro 9.

However, Microsoft has not released any concrete data and numbers for its statements about Prism, only telling everyone that Prism will do for Arm PCs what was seen with Rosetta for Macs – with similar performance and efficiency.

Despite this, it is possible to remember that the features and optimizations seen in Arm-based Apple hardware were produced to improve x86 emulation – with Apple silicon incorporating the “weak” and “strong” memory order models of both.

It remains to be seen whether the Snapdragon Whether Prism will be as good or even better than Rosetta emulation will be seen in June 2024.

Fonte: PCGamer