Correct, on macs it spawns a (usually aarch64) vm using apples hypervisor framework api (hw virt) and runs docker daemon inside of it. Then it’s what I described above - just an process running arm instructions. If you’re using qemu binfmt_misc runner which uses “user mode emulation” not to be confused with system emulation which does full blown hw emulation. So it’s aready doing similar things to rosetta 2
Yes qemu and Rosetta perform the same basic role here (bintfmt handler for x86 bins), but Rosetta should perform significantly better (otherwise there would be virtually no reason at all to build this).
Something needs to set up the VM that Docker runs in. Docker Desktop is that something. The GUI even lets you tweak the VM resources. I suppose you could do it all on your own, but most macOS users probably just install Docker Desktop and let it handle the VM.
