macOS 26 Tahoe introduces a new disk image format called ASIF that offers near-native speeds, improving virtual machine performance on Apple silicon Macs.
ASIF disk images overcome performance limitations of previous disk image formats like UDSP, offering faster read and write speeds.
Creation of ASIF images is limited to macOS 26 Tahoe using Disk Utility or the 'diskutil' command tool, but not supported in macOS Sequoia 15.5 or earlier.
ASIF image performance can reach 5.8 to 6.6 GB/s for unencrypted APFS on an internal SSD, showing substantial improvement over older formats.
Apple recommends using ASIF for VM backing stores and general-purpose disk images due to its efficiency in file transfer and compatibility with macOS 26.
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