Prism Compatibility with Windows on ARM PCs

Quick Read: Does Prism work on ARM-powered PCs?

Yes! x64 emulation is generally available on Windows 11 ARM PCs. With x64 emulation, Prism, starting with version 9, works on Windows 11 on ARM PCs.

What is ARM?

ARM (Advanced RISC Machine or Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architectures for computer processors. Like x86 and x64, ARM is a type of processor architecture used in PCs today.

Originally, Windows could run only on PCs that were powered by x86 and x64 processors. Today, Windows 11 desktop can also run on machines that are powered by ARM processors.

Processor architecture also has an impact on the applications that can (or cannot) be used on a device. Windows 11 on ARM is capable of running applications compiled to run natively on ARM. Additionally, ARM devices with Windows 11 can seamlessly run 32-bit x86 Win32 applications via x86 emulation and 64-bit x64 Win32 applications via x64 emulation. Windows 10 on ARM also supports emulation, but only for x86 applications.

In December 2020, Microsoft released the first preview of x64 emulation on Windows 10 for ARM64 devices to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel. This x64 emulation is now generally available in Windows 11, and users who wish to continue using this functionality should update from Windows 10 to Windows 11.

Is it possible to install and launch Prism on an ARM-powered PC?

Yes! Prism versions 9 and newer, which are 64-bit x64 only, will run on Windows 11 on ARM, as x64 emulation is now generally available. Prism versions 9 and newer are not available in 32-bit x86 versions, so will not run on Windows 10 ARM.

In the future, we may consider recompiling and adapting Prism to run natively on ARM-powered devices running Windows.

If x64 emulation is not available on your device, attempting to install Prism 9 on Windows 11 (or Windows 10) on ARM will result in the following alert being displayed: "This installation package is not supported by this processor type. Contact your product vendor."

Prism 8 and older versions, which have a 32-bit x86 version, can presumably be installed and launched on Windows 11 on ARM under x86 emulation. However, we do not recommend running old Prism versions on Windows on ARM. We do not currently support this CPU architecture, and we can not guarantee Prism 8’s performance or stability on Windows on ARM.

Find more information on Prism's system requirements page in the Prism User Guide:
https://www.graphpad.com/guides/prism/latest/user-guide/system_requirements.htm