In a groundbreaking development, the Asahi Linux project has successfully enabled the running of Windows games on Apple Silicon Macs, integrating Linux and Arm architecture in a way that would have seemed improbable just a few years ago. This achievement stems from the collaborative efforts of several open-source initiatives, as highlighted by Alyssa Rosenzweig, the GPU lead for Asahi Linux.
The project utilizes a combination of technologies, including the FEX project, which translates x86 CPU code to Arm; the Wine project for executing Windows binaries on Linux; and DXVK and Proton, which translate DirectX 12 API calls into Vulkan API calls. At the heart of this innovation is Asahi’s own Vulkan-conformant driver tailored for Apple’s graphics hardware.
Due to inherent differences in memory addressing between Apple Silicon and x86 systems—where Apple uses 16 KB memory pages and x86 systems utilize 4 KB pages—games are run inside a virtual machine (VM) to bridge this gap, mitigating compatibility issues faced by Asahi and other Arm Linux distributions.
The advancements in Asahi’s Vulkan and OpenGL drivers are particularly noteworthy, given that Apple’s graphics drivers for macOS lack support for many of these APIs. The highest version of OpenGL available on macOS remains 4.1, unchanged since 2013, prior to the introduction of Apple’s proprietary Metal graphics API.
In April, Rosenzweig launched the first Vulkan 1.3-conformant version of the Asahi GPU driver, codenamed Honeykrisp. Since then, she has incorporated additional extensions necessary for the DXVK translation layer, even emulating hardware features not natively supported by the M-series GPUs. The driver also added compatibility for OpenCL 3.0.
Currently, this new driver and game compatibility feature is accessible in the alpha phase of the Fedora Asahi Remix distros, with a full 1.0 release anticipated in the future. It supports M1 and M2-series Macs, although M3 systems are not yet included as the team focuses on enhancing support for M1 and M2. Rosenzweig notes that most games will require 16GB of RAM due to emulation overhead.
Despite some limitations, the ability to run x86 Windows games on Arm Linux Macs marks a significant milestone, showcasing the remarkable progress made by the Linux community and various translation layers in expanding the capabilities of gaming on diverse platforms.
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