VMware Fusion is a software

hypervisor A hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor, VMM, or virtualizer) is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is calle ...

developed by

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

for Mac computers. VMware Fusion allows Macs with

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

or the

Apple M series Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and System in package, system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture. It is the basis of most new Mac (computer), Mac computers as well as iPho ...

of chips to run

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

s with guest

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

s, such as

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

, or

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, within the host

operating system.

Overview

VMware Fusion can virtualize a multitude of operating systems, including many older versions of

, which allows users to run older Mac

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

that can no longer be run under the current version of macOS, such as

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

and

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

applications.

History

VMware Fusion, which uses a combination of

paravirtualization In computing, paravirtualization or para-virtualization is a virtualization technique that presents a software interface to the virtual machines which is similar, yet not identical, to the underlying hardware–software interface. The intent o ...

and

hardware virtualization Hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers as complete hardware platforms, certain logical abstractions of their componentry, or only the functionality required to run various operating systems. Virtualization hides the physica ...

made possible by the

Mac transition to Intel processors Apple transitioned the CPUs of their Mac and Xserve computers from PowerPC to the x86 architecture from Intel. The change was announced at the 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) by then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who said Apple would gr ...

in 2006, marked VMware's first entry into Macintosh-based

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

. VMware Fusion uses

Intel VT x86 virtualization is the use of hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities on an x86/x86-64 CPU. In the late 1990s x86 virtualization was achieved by complex software techniques, necessary to compensate for the processor's lack of hardware-as ...

present in the

Intel Core microarchitecture The Intel Core microarchitecture (provisionally referred to as Next Generation Micro-architecture, and developed as Merom) is a multi-core processor microarchitecture launched by Intel in mid-2006. It is a major evolution over the Yonah, the ...

platform. Much of the underlying technology in VMware Fusion is inherited from other VMware products, such as

VMware Workstation VMware Workstation Pro (known as VMware Workstation until release of VMware Workstation 12 in 2015) is a hosted (Type 2) hypervisor that runs on x64 versions of Windows and Linux operating systemshttps://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/searc ...

, allowing VMware Fusion to offer features such as

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit Integer (computer science), integers, memory addresses, or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing unit, CPUs and arithmetic logic unit, ALUs are those ...

and SMP support. VMware Fusion 1.0 was released on August 6, 2007, exactly one year after being announced. Along with the

Mac transition to Apple silicon The Mac transition to Apple silicon is the process of changing the central processing units (CPUs) of Apple Inc.'s line of Mac computers from Intel's x86-64 processors to Apple-designed systems on a chip that use the ARM64 architecture. CEO ...

, VMware announced plans for Fusion to support the new M-series platform and ARM architecture, releasing a tech preview for M1 chips in September 2021. In November 2022, VMware Fusion 13 was released, allowing ARM virtualization on Apple Silicon chips. Coinciding with the release, VMware implemented support for TPM 2.0 and

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

4.3, along with improvements to VMware Tools on

Windows 11 Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...

. VMware Fusion 13 retains support for Intel Macs, distributing the software as a

universal binary The universal binary format is, in Apple parlance, a format for executable files that run natively on either PowerPC or Intel-manufactured IA-32 or Intel 64 or ARM64-based Macintosh computers. The format originated on NeXTStep as " Multi-Archi ...

System requirements

* Most Macs launched in 2015 or later with Apple Silicon or Intel processors for VMware Fusion 13, most Macs launched in 2012 or later for VMware Fusion 12, most Macs launched in 2011 or later for VMware Fusion 11, any

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mod ...

capable

Mac for VMware Fusion 8 *

macOS Monterey macOS Monterey (version 12) is the eighteenth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. The successor to macOS Big Sur, it was announced at WWDC 2021 on June 7, 2021, and released on October 25, 2021. m ...

or later for VMware Fusion 13,

macOS Catalina macOS Catalina (version 10.15) is the sixteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. It is the successor to macOS Mojave and was announced at WWDC 2019 on June 3, 2019 and released to the publ ...

or later for VMware Fusion 12, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan or later for VMware Fusion 11, Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks or later for VMware Fusion 8 * Operating system installation media for virtual machines

References

External links

* {{Virtualization products

Fusion Fusion, or synthesis, is the process of combining two or more distinct entities into a new whole. Fusion may also refer to: Science and technology Physics *Nuclear fusion, multiple atomic nuclei combining to form one or more different atomic nucl ...

Virtualization software MacOS software

Overview

History

System requirements

See also

References

Further reading

External links