Apple has renewed some of its Macs by adding its new M1 processor, which not only allows better performance, but also enables iPad applications directly to the computer.
From now on, these possibilities are widening with some experiments carried out by certain users who wanted to exploit the M1 processor and its functionalities to have other systems, as it is this case which explains how this processor is able to emulate Nintendo Switch games.
Apple Silicon compatibility
While Apple’s M1 processor has been proven to run Windows 10 faster than the Surface Pro X itself, some developers are still experimenting and testing how far it can go. the potential of this new chip.
Therefore, some adventurers have tried various systems and other non-Apple plugins to see if newer Macs with M1 chip are able to run them alternately as a tool that can take over their functions.
Developer Sera Tonin Brocious shared her work to emulate games from Nintendo Switch on his Mac. Through his Twitter account, he posted and answered some questions from his followers about how he achieved this and his results.
Nintendo Switch on Mac
On December 19, the developer @daeken He uploaded the preview of one of his new projects he was working on to his Twitter account and showed the results. In one picture you could see that he had realized emulate Nintendo Switch on your Mac with M1 processor.
In this tweet, he mentioned that he had already successfully run the Nintendo Start Screen with the software MoltenVK and had started system virtualization, had generally done the most important thing to start a full emulation.
The adaptation of the Yuzu to the M1 is going very well. I have run it enough with MoltenVK for the initial splash screen and initialization of virtualization. I just need to finish wiring the memory and things should start Just Working (TM). Break * all abstraction rules * in the process o / pic.twitter.com/niLLqNAqLo
– Will Tonin Brocious (@daeken) December 20, 2020
The next day he uploaded an update on his progress, showing he had managed to emulate Mario odissey through Yuzu emulator. However, I suggest that although he didn’t have any issues in the emulation, he noticed a little lag in the footage and shared a video showing the result.
I’m so proud of it. He only gets a few in-game frames before he hits MoltenVK’s first limitation, but damn. pic.twitter.com/NcLIBLWOPz
– Will Tonin Brocious (@daeken) December 20, 2020
Other possibilities
According to the report published by 8 Bit, this was made possible by Two reasons. One is the importance that MoltenVK has had and its possibilities, which, according to the site, are as follows:
“With MoltenVK, you get the performance benefits and additional debugging and performance tuning capabilities of the Metal framework on iOS and macOS, without having to rewrite your app that already uses Vulkan, the next-gen open standard API for high performance GPU acceleration.
And the next is that the processor switch in Apple Silicon could apparently be easy to emulate because of it also works on an ARM processor. In this regard, the developer was present in a response, offering the detail that facilitated the whole process and can be done with other executions.
“if Hypervisor.framework is ever made available on iOS, the migration would be pretty easy I imagine.
Additional information is that Hypervisor.fr framework is the same entry which allowed another developer to run Windows ARM on Apple Silicon.
So far the emulation is not complete, the developer mentioned that complete game execution is missing, but it’s only a matter of days before you can get it.
Maybe later it will be possible to bring other applications and systems to Macs thanks to Apple Silicon and its future processors like iPad apps. At the moment, this project of Apple silicon It seems like a whole new path for Apple and the developers.
