Apple’s transition to using Apple silicon Macs brought about speculation regarding how existing macOS software would run on the new architecture. It was revealed that translation of x86 code, similar to what Rosetta did during the transition from PowerPC to Intel, would be used, along with virtualization. Apple had already built support for virtualization in OS X 10.10 Yosemite in 2014. Preparations for Apple silicon Macs included the development of kernel extensions to provide support for VirtIO. The release of Big Sur introduced hardware support for virtualization extensions. In Monterey, lightweight virtualization of macOS and Linux was launched with limited support. The virtualization team is excited about the technology’s potential. However, there are still outstanding issues, such as Apple ID support, licensing limits, and lack of support for ISO keyboard layouts in macOS VMs.
https://eclecticlight.co/2024/01/11/how-virtualisation-came-to-apple-silicon-macs/