Everything You Should Know About Apple ARM On Desktop

Most of the desktop and laptop computers sold today are solely based on the x86 CPU architecture family. Both Intel and AMD dominated the market for years, making them a crucial part of Windows application development. Smartphones and other portable devices, on the other hand, are dominated by ARM. However, recent developments are now introducing ARM onto the desktop. In this webinar presented by Jim Mckeeth, we will learn more about the latest Apple ARM silicon along with samples and demonstrations on how to run iOS apps on desktop platforms with the latest Delphi 11.2 Alexandria.

What does ARM mean?

ARM is an acronym for Advance RISC Machine and is among the most licensed processors worldwide. These processor chips are designed for portable devices like smartphones, wireless communications technologies, networking modules, and more. It is important to note that ARM processors are built on a load-and-store type architecture. According to this architecture, data processing is executed only on the data present in the registers and not directly on the memory contents. As a result, these processors follow data processing instructions that differ from those used for accessing the memory.

ARM vs x86 – what is the difference?

One of the biggest differences between ARM and x86 processors is Intel and AMD are the only manufacturers of Intel and AMD processors and all those processors are generally compatible. It is interesting to note that when you go back to the 32-bit to 64-bit transition, Intel came up with Itanium which became their own 64-bit instruction set whereas AMD came up with their amd64. ARM on the other hand has many manufacturers and each is customized from a large specification with many options for specific use cases and scenarios.

Apple, for instance, uses ARM architecture to build its silicon. This silicon family powers the latest Mac computers and Apple devices like iPhones, iPad, and more. Apple’s first desktop ARM CPU namely M1 was announced in November 2020. The latest one is the M2 which was recently rolled out in June of 2022. As a successor, M2 has notable improvements. For instance, it is based on improved 5-nm technology and it houses over 20 billion transistors.

Where can I learn more about Apple ARM on the desktop?

In this video, Jim Mckeeth will also demonstrate how to run iOS apps on macOS. Prior to M1, this method is only possible through third-party emulators. With M1, you can run iPhone and iPad apps seamlessly. Also, with the new ARM-Based iOS Simulator, you can seamlessly interact with apps on multiple devices. The video also highlights different Virtualization Stacks, particularly the three big players like the UTM, Parallels Desktop, and VMware Fusion. McKeeth will also demonstrate how to create a connection profile from the latest RAD Studio 11.2 to deploy and execute a project on a remote workstation.

To learn more about the Apple ARM on Desktop, feel free to watch the webinar below.