64-bit only future and virtual machines

Apple has started the phasing out of 32-bit applications on MacOS. How is this going to impact virtual machines, be it Parallels, VMWare, VirtualBox, or Apple own hypervisor? Will it still be possible to run 32-bit OS inside virtual machines?


There’s never been a hard limit running older os in VM so this seems like a safe bet to say, yes - virtualization is a good bet to keep 32 bit os alive like it is for os back to System 1 and the (mostly) 32 bit Motorola 68000 processor.


It would be hard to prevent things like QEMU from being able to run 32-bit operating systems, as QEMU supports full hardware virtualization (this is distinct from hardware-assisted virtualization).

32-bit applications will likely become more difficult to run, as one will likely need an appropriately old OS and also any libraries or frameworks that 32-bit application depends on. However a generic 32-bit OS (assuming virtualization support exists for it) should be runnable by anything that does full hardware virtualization.