QIIME2 for ARM based Systems?

Hello, I wasn't sure where to ask this question but I was wondering:

Are there are any plans for releasing QIIME2 and all of the associated packages for ARM-based systems (e.g., M1 Macs or other ARM-based platforms)?

It seems like ARM-based systems are going to grow in popularity. Am I wrong in thinking that deploying QIIME2 for ARM-based systems would increase the speed of certain tasks?

Thanks for your expertise :slight_smile:

I would like this too!

As you probably know, Qiime2 is deployed using the Anaconda package manager, using these channels in this order:

channels:
  - qiime2/label/r2022.2
  - https://packages.qiime2.org/qiime2/2022.2/passed/core/
  - conda-forge
  - bioconda
  - defaults

For an ARM native build (like osx-arm64), all these channels need to ship arm native builds. Presumably we control the first two channels, and conda-forge has supported osx-arm64 builds for more than a year!

Bioconda would like to support other platforms, but does not at this time.

Uh, I'm not sure arm is faster than x86, but can be cheaper and would let more people run qiime on their new Macs!

For context, it looks like osx-arm64 and and aarch64 are an order of magnitude less popular than Windows x86 and OSX x86, and two orders of magnitude less popular than x86 linux. :person_shrugging:

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