System requirements

The BlackBerry 10 Device Simulator has the following system requirements.

Processor

Intel dual core 2.0 GHz or higher or an AMD Athlon 4200+ or higher

Virtualization (highly recommended)

CPU support for Intel Virtualization Technology extensions (VT, VT-x, vmx) or AMD Virtualization extensions (AMD-V, SVM). To enable virtualization, see below.
Disk space

10 GB
Memory

4 GB
Graphics

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or higher or an ATI Radeon HD 2600 or higher

It is highly recommended that you install video drivers directly from the manufacturer of your graphics card.
Virtual machine

For Windows and Linux systems, download VMware Player 3.1 or later.

For Mac systems, download  VMware Fusion 3.1 or later.

You can download previous versions of the simulator, and you can also use the simulator for QNX Momentics IDE for BlackBerry.

Use virtualization extensions to share processor resources

Virtual machine acceleration improves the performance of the simulator 1130%. This is done by allowing multiple operating systems to share x86 processor resources simultaneously using virtualization extensions. To use these extensions with the simulator, your CPU must support one of the following virtualization extensions:

  • Intel Virtualization Technology extensions (VT, VT-x, vmx)
  • AMD Virtualization extensions (AMD-V, SVM)

Virtualization extensions are enabled through your computer's BIOS and are usually turned off by default. Check the documentation for your operating system to find out how to enable virtualization extensions.

Graphics support for the simulator

The BlackBerry 10 Device Simulator supports HW Accelerated GLES 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 for Native games and Cascades. Support for texture compression formats has been extended for GLES 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0, with the following decompression formats:

  • GL_COMPRESSED_RGB_PVRTC_4BPPV1_IMG
  • GL_COMPRESSED_RGB_PVRTC_2BPPV1_IMG
  • GL_COMPRESSED_RGBA_PVRTC_4BPPV1_IMG
  • GL_COMPRESSED_RGBA_PVRTC_2BPPV1_IMG
  • GL_ATC_RGB_AMD
  • GL_ATC_RGBA_EXPLICIT_ALPHA_AMD
  • GL_ATC_RGBA_INTERPOLATED_ALPHA_A

Videos and further information

The following short videos will show you how to increase your simulator's performance:

You can use these links to search for other BlackBerry articles.