Set the Number of
Virtual Processors
You can increase
performance of a virtual machine by making more processors available because
more tasks can be performed simultaneously. When you assign a virtual processor
to the virtual machine, it reduces the processor resources that are available
to your Mac.
Shut down or power off the
virtual machine. You cannot change the setting while the virtual machine is
powered on or suspended.
For Windows virtual machines
running mostly office and Internet productivity applications, using multiple
virtual processors is not beneficial, so the default single virtual processor
is ideal. For server workloads and compute-intensive applications, adding extra
virtual processors may provide an increase in application performance.
Application | Recommended number of
processors |
|---|---|
Desktop applications | 1
processor |
Server operating systems | 2
processors |
Video encoding, modeling, and
scientific | 4 processors |
In some circumstances, adding
additional processors can decrease the overall performance of the virtual
machine and your Mac. This can occur if the operating system or application is
not using the processors efficiently. In this case, reducing the number of
processors is recommended.
Assigning all processors on
the Mac to the virtual machine results in extremely poor performance. macOS
must continue to perform background tasks even if no Mac applications are
running. If you assign all processors to a virtual machine, this prevents
important Mac tasks from being completed.
- Select .
- Select a virtual machine in theVirtual Machine Librarywindow and clickSettings.
- Under System Settings in theSettingswindow, clickProcessors & Memory.
- Select the number of processor cores for the virtual machine.Information about your selected number of processors is displayed at the bottom of theProcessors & Memorywindow.
- Restart the virtual machine.