In order for the Virtual SNE to run, consideration must be given to the CPU architecture in use.
The CPU architecture of the physical host platform must be Broadwell or later (if Intel), or Zen or later (if AMD).
The VMware host must be emulating a Broadwell or later CPU architecture.
VMware vSphere has a feature called EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility), which is designed to let you specify a CPU architecture which VMware exposes to all guests, even if it is running on a newer CPU architecture. It's intended so that if you migrate guests across different host CPU architectures, the guest still sees a common CPU type.
If EVC is enabled and emulating the Haswell architecture, for instance (the microarchitecture previous to Broadwell), the Virtual SNE will not run. Disabling EVC and running on Broadwell CPU architecture should resolve this.