Microsoft’s New Prism Update Finally Lets More x86 Apps & Games Run on Windows 11 on ARM

If you use Windows 11 on ARM, there’s some good news for you. Microsoft is making sure that more x86 apps can run on such systems, and it’s doing so by releasing an update to its Prism emulator.

In an update to its Tech Community blog post, the company says that “The Prism emulator is a core part of the Windows on Arm platform, ensuring that Windows apps are able to run seamlessly on Windows on Arm even if they were built for traditional x86 processors and have not been updated to run natively on Arm. Prism works by transparently converting an app’s x86 instructions to Arm64 code as the app runs.”

With the latest Prism update, the emulator gets the ability to translate more x86 instruction set architecture extensions, including AVX and AVX2, and related extensions BMI, FMA, F16C, and others. That being said, Microsoft warns that these extensions are not necessarily support by processor supported by a processor when running Windows.

However, “they are common enough for some apps to depend on their availability.” And that “they are especially relied on by creative tools and games that benefit from the efficient parallel processing that these CPU instructions provide.” To put it simply, Prism can now run several games that were previously unable to work on Windows on Arm.

Microsoft points out Ableton Live as an example of this, which will be coming to Windows on Arm as a native app next year. Apparently, attempting to install Ableton Live 12 as an emulated app prior to this update would fail with a system requirements error because it requires AVX support. However, after the Prism update, the app installs and runs without issue.

If you are wondering where to get the Prism update, it’s now being rolled out to all Windows on Arm devices running Windows 11, version 24H2 or later. All 64-bit x86 apps will have the updated CPU feature support enabled by default. Moreover, Microsoft says that the 32-bit apps will have it turned off by default, but you can always opt in using compatibility settings.