minimum RAM and CPU for a Mac VM to run on Apple M3

I don't think Apple publishes minimum RAM requirements for Ventura. However, I believe that all of the computers with which Ventura is compatible came with at least 8 GB of RAM. (Spot-checked; not exhaustively verified.). The surprise is not that Ventura fails to run in a VM with 1 GB of RAM, but that it runs in one with only 2 GB.

The Parallels site lists RAM requirements for the host Mac, but does not seem to provide suggestions of how much RAM to allocate to a virtual machine. (You're free to go through the multi-hundred page user manual and see if you can find any.)

macOS Ventura is compatible with these computers - Apple Support

Parallels Knowledge Base – Parallels Desktop for Mac System Requirements

Trying to run any modern OS in that little memory is far too little.

Some touchpoints:

We say that 10.11 El Capitan (just macOS, nothing else running) requires MORE than 4 GB to run in an appropriately-responsive way.

We say that MacOS Ventura (just macOS, nothing else running) requires MORE than 8 GB to run in an appropriately-responsive way.

Quit all other Apps, and allocate AT Least 8GB of RAM. if there is lots left over, you can back that number down.

What OS will you be running there? Windows for ARM?

for that guest, In my opinion, you will need at least 8GB for the virtual machine. Be sure to quit your browser and anything else you can.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

What OS will you be running there? Windows for ARM?

The OP is trying to run macOS 13.6.9 (Ventura) as a guest OS.

"parallel version: parallel desktop 19 for Mac Pro edition

physical Machine hardware: Apple M3 Pro, 18G RAM, disk: 500G

VM OS: Mac OS 13.6 , Mac OS 13.6.9"

A Mac that has a M3 Pro processor and 18 GB of RAM would be a 14" or 16" M3 Pro MacBook Pro. I don't think Apple has any other M3 Pro machines out yet. According to MacTracker, the minimum host OS for one of those MacBook Pros would be macOS 14.1 (Sonoma). So running Ventura as a guest would be the only way you could run it on the OP's machine.

You wouldn't be able to run High Sierra or Mojave as a Parallels guest OS on an Apple Silicon Mac because those versions of macOS are Intel-only, and Parallels is just a VM program, not an emulator.

the nomenclature around running one OS inside another gets instantly confusing.

I run Virtual Box on an older Intel Mac, and their documentation uses HOST OS and GUEST OS to make that distinction perfectly clear.