Has anyone tried running Delphi on Windows ARM?

[Chris Pim 34]

I’ve just had an email from Parallels telling me that their latest update has official support for Windows ARM. From what I’ve read, Windows ARM can run x86 apps in emulation, so I wonder if Delphi 10.4 would run on a Windows 10 ARM VM.

Before I spend a day setting this up to try it, I wonder if anyone else has already tried this to see if it works?

 

It’s not for production use at the moment, just curiousity.

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

https://www.theverge.com/22383598/parallels-desktop-mac-windows-10-install-m1-macbook

I guess someone has to actually try it out to get an answer here.

[Chris Pim 34]

That was exactly the point of my question!

As it happens, I've decided just to try it myself so I'll post the end results here as soon as I have them.

[Chris Pim 34]

UPDATE: I can confirm that Delphi 10.4.2 installs, builds and runs on a Mac M1 with a Parallels Desktop VM of WIndows 10 ARM (insider build).

I successfully installed all my components (TMS, JVE, custom), build and ran both VCL (win32) and FMX (win32, MacOS64, Android32/64 and iOS64) perfectly.

I'm going to keep using it for a while but if all goes well, this is a great solution and so much faster than my older Intel Macbook

[david_navigator 12]

Is it only me that thinks it's funny that it's faster to run Windows via an emulator on a non-native platform, than it is to run Windows directly on Intel ?
 

[David Heffernan 2345]

3 hours ago, david_navigator said:

Is it only me that thinks it's funny that it's faster to run Windows via an emulator on a non-native platform, than it is to run Windows directly on Intel ?
 

That does sound funny. Is it true though? 

[Cristian Peța 103]

From what I understand from the article it's "the Arm version of Windows". No emulator. But this Windows can run x86 code, like Delphi IDE, most probably using an emulator.

[Der schöne Günther 316]

Can you confirm it cannot only build projects but also debug them?

Edited April 18, 2021 by Der schöne Günther

[eSzeL 0]

On 4/16/2021 at 3:03 PM, Chris Pim said:

UPDATE: I can confirm that Delphi 10.4.2 installs, builds and runs on a Mac M1 with a Parallels Desktop VM of WIndows 10 ARM (insider build).

I successfully installed all my components (TMS, JVE, custom), build and ran both VCL (win32) and FMX (win32, MacOS64, Android32/64 and iOS64) perfectly.

I'm going to keep using it for a while but if all goes well, this is a great solution and so much faster than my older Intel Macbook

Chris! Please help, please update! Everything works fine? I am just waiting for you with buying.. 🙂

 

Others tried?

Edited April 21, 2021 by eSzeL

[Chris Pim 34]

3 hours ago, eSzeL said:

Chris! Please help, please update! Everything works fine? I am just waiting for you with buying.. 🙂

 

Others tried?

 

It works well. I've managed to build and run my VCL and FMX projects on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac without any problems.

Note that both Windows ARM and the way it runs Delphi are still in preview so tread carefully!

 

On 4/18/2021 at 9:01 PM, Der schöne Günther said:

Can you confirm it cannot only build projects but also debug them?

I can debug Windows and Android no problem. I'm having issues debugging iOS as it's stopping in the IDE but showing the CPU rather than code views. I believe this might be a badly built component I need to re-install rather than an issue with the environment but can't confirm either way at the moment.

[Chris Pim 34]

2 hours ago, Chris Pim said:

I can debug Windows and Android no problem. I'm having issues debugging iOS as it's stopping in the IDE but showing the CPU rather than code views. I believe this might be a badly built component I need to re-install rather than an issue with the environment but can't confirm either way at the moment.

An update on the debugging issues on iOS - it's all working now. My VM just needed a restart and I can debug without problems now.

[eSzeL 0]

3 hours ago, Chris Pim said:

 

It works well. I've managed to build and run my VCL and FMX projects on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac without any problems.

Note that both Windows ARM and the way it runs Delphi are still in preview so tread carefully!

 

I can debug Windows and Android no problem. I'm having issues debugging iOS as it's stopping in the IDE but showing the CPU rather than code views. I believe this might be a badly built component I need to re-install rather than an issue with the environment but can't confirm either way at the moment.

 

So if I have a 32bit x86 Windows VCL application with components working flawlessly on Windows 7 32bit in Rad Studio Tokyo, it's 99% that I can compile, run, debug it on the preview version of Windows ARM with the same Delphi? 🙂 Thank you!

[Joe Sansalone 6]

Chris thanks for posting your results. 

I also am looking to purchase an M1-based macbook to run Windows, primarily for Delphi.

 

And to run/debug iOS/macOS apps on the same computer.

 

Is it easy to have Delphi/Windows communicate with PAServer/macOS

on the same machine?  I'm guessing this is all done with Parallels.

 

 

[eSzeL 0]

What about the compile speed? The ARM Windows 10 needs to run the RAD Studio virtualised, with I think really lower speed.

As I saw the Geekbench numbers are the following for 1 thread:

- Geekbench ARM running on OSX on M1 HW native - 1700 pts

- Geekbench ARM running on Win10 ARM Parallels on M1 HW (ARM to ARM virtualisation) - 1500 pts

- Geekbench x86 running on Win10 ARM on M1 HW (x86->ARM->ARM) - 500 pts

- Old 2015 i5 Macbook Geekbench native x86 - 700 pts