vcvrack on windows on arm64 (woa) systems

just out of curiosity i wanted to find out if the x86 vcvrack version can run on arm64 windows 11 systems via the intel to arm64 translation integrated into the latest windows 11 version (tested on 22h2) just like the intel mac version seems to be working fine on the new arm macs … and it does :slight_smile:

for it to work the “opencl and opengl compatibility pacakge” needs to be installed from the microsoft app store: Microsoft Apps - it provides the opengl graphics api used by vcvrack and which is not included by default on arm windows systems by mapping it to directx 12 (ithink via open source mesa code) so real gpu opengl acceleration is given - afterwards the vcvrack installer can be downloaded and installed just as on an intel machine

do not expect wonders regarding performance as (at least the cheaper) windows arm machines are not that powerfull and the intel translation to arm does not really help on top, but at least it seems to work and on higher end woa systems like the thinkpad x13s, the microsoft surface pro 9 or the windows dev kit 2023 it might even be quite useable … the nice thing about those woa systems is that the usually do not have a fan (so are completely silent) and have a very long battery life … an apple m1 is for sure a way better performing choice, but in case someone has such a system around it might be interesting to play around with it

i tested it on a samsung galaxy book go with a snapdragon 7c and the performance was about 2/3 or what i get with my native linux aarch64 rack build when running on similar hardware - so in the end not too bad … i just did some simple testing, so not sure if there are any hidden problems somewhere still - just thought it might be interesting to share …

best wishes - hexdump

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Could be an interesting choice for hosting evolving sequencers to drive hardware instruments.

Any news in 2025? Nobody interested in a native version for Windows on ARM? Do the x64 version working on Snapdragon X Elite? I found no infos about that.