Fusion still uses Intel processes on Apple Silicon?

[ShockFly]

So ever since I've owned my MacBook Pro M1 Pro I've seen a steady influx of new Apple Silicon apps to the point that right now only a few apps on my system are not Apple Silicon native. Those are also not that important, like for example the KIA Nav Updater tool, which I only use once or twice a year and for which I can use my Windows 11 machine.

Anyway, back to Fusion: afaik it has been Apple Silicon native for quite a while now but in my search for Intel processes and starting up every single app (one by one) to see if an Intel process is used, I noticed that Fusion is using the following 4 processes that are mentioned as Intel under the Kind column in Activity Monitor:

• VMware Fusion Applications Menu Helper

• VMware Fusion Applications Menu

• amsrv

• vmrest

I'm only running arm VMs (mainly a Windows 11 instance, sometimes a Linux distro but that's far less important and I still have a x64 Windows machine on the side) so I'm in doubt whether Fusion still needs Rosetta 2 or not.

What I want to achieve is reinstall my MacBook and not install Rosetta 2 anymore, which should be fine apart from a few apps for which I can use alternative methods/apps. But it seems as if Fusion is not 100% Apple Silicon native? Or is it just using those because Rosetta 2 is installed on my system?

So in short: will Fusion be able to fully run on an Apple Silicon machine without Rosetta 2 installed?

[Technogeezer]

The first three of those processes are for the VMware Application menu that’s in the Mac’s menu bar. I wouldn’t worry about it because you should turn it off and stop using it. VMware states it is deprecated and will be dropped in a probably not too future release. 

vmrest is associated with the REST API services. Not a big deal since it isn’t used much, if at all  

It would not surprise me if some of the bundled CLI commands are still Intel. I would not be worried about Fusion not being 100% native.  The parts that really matter are ARM native code. And Rosetta really isn’t a drain on the system.for the vast majority of use cases. It does a one-time translation of apps from Intel to ARM. The resulting translated code runs natively. 

[ShockFly]

I appreciate the reply and explanation. I fully understand what you're saying.

However, having said that, my goal is to not enable Rosetta 2 altogether. Sure, it's been running just fine so I do trust what you say about it not really being a drain on the system, so it's more about my personal goal of not having it enabled at all.

Is that at all possible? Or does Fusion require Rosetta nonetheless?

[ColoradoMarmot]

Rosetta doesn't really add much overhead, and there's no risk of having it enabled.  Until Fusion updates their code, there's nothing you can do.

[Technogeezer]

I've done a quick scan of the executables within the Fusion 13.5.1 bundle. With the exception of VMware Fusion Application Menu.app, everything else seems to be compiled as universal x86_64 and ARM binaries. 

My guess is that Fusion will run fine without Rosetta.

Rosetta is not something that I'd go out of my way to avoid installing. But as @ColoradoMarmot notes, Rosetta doesn't make much of an impact to a system, and its benefits outweigh any impact that it has. If you have something compiled as a  universal binary, macOS will prefer the native architecture (that can be over-ridden on Apple Silicon in the application's Get Info dialog if you need to).