PCs without processors that support MBEC rely on software emulation called 'Restricted User Mode,' which does get you the security benefits but affects performance more. It’s easiest to think of MBEC as hardware acceleration for the memory integrity feature, sort of like how AES-NI instructions sped up encryption operations a decade or so ago. MBEC support is only included in relatively new processors, starting with the Kaby Lake and Skylake-X architectures on Intel’s side, and the Zen 2 architecture on AMD’s side-this matches pretty closely, albeit not exactly, with the Windows 11 processor support lists. HVCI can be enabled on any Windows 10 PC that doesn’t have driver incompatibility issues, but older computers will incur a significant performance penalty because their processors don’t support mode-based execution control, or MBEC.Īnd that acronym seems to be at the root of Windows 11’s CPU support list. VBS includes an optional feature called 'memory integrity.' That’s the more user-friendly name for something called Hypervisor-protected code integrity, or HVCI. Windows 11 (and also Windows 10!) uses virtualization-based security, or VBS, to isolate parts of system memory from the rest of the system.

ArsTechnica gave a great explanation of the hardware requirement:

Windows 11 media creation tool