{"id":350,"date":"2006-04-06T20:25:02","date_gmt":"2006-04-06T19:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.devco.net\/?p=350"},"modified":"2009-10-09T16:52:50","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T15:52:50","slug":"intel_virtualisation_technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/archives\/2006\/04\/06\/intel_virtualisation_technology.php","title":{"rendered":"Intel Virtualisation Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been a fan of virtualization for some time, been a very early user of VMWare years ago in fact version 2 of my iScan appliction was written entirely inside VMWare while stuck in a hotel in Athens around 2001. Things since then has come a long way especially on Intel hardware.
\nIntel has introduced their Virtualization Technology<\/a> extensions on their recent chips to enable the CPU to run multiple operating systems on the actual CPU, much like main frames have been able to do for ages.<\/p>\n

\nVirtualization enhanced by Intel Virtualization Technology will allow a platform to run multiple operating systems and applications in independent partitions. With virtualization, one computer system can function as multiple \u201cvirtual\u201d systems. With processor and I\/O enhancements to Intel’s various platforms, Intel Virtualization Technology can improve the performance and robustness of today’s software-only virtual machine solutions.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve been very excited to get my hands on both hardware and software together that lets me explore this exciting technology and today that was delivered in the form of my Apple iMac Core Duo machine running Parallels Workstation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nParallels Workstation 2.0 is the first desktop virtualization solution to include a lightweight hypervisor, a mature technology originally developed in the 1960s to maximize the power of large mainframes. Hypervisor technology dramatically improves virtual machine stability, security and performance by using a thin layer of software, inserted between the machine’s hardware and the primary operating system, to directly control some of the host machine’s hardware profiles and resources. It not only makes Parallels Workstation-powered virtual machines secure, stable and efficient, but also empowers users to immediately realize the benefits associated with Intel VT hardware virtualization architecture.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The good thing is it works on OS X on Intel hardware and allows you to run most operating systems. I grabbed a copy of FreeBSD 6.0 and immediately knew it was fast, only later did I realise how fast.
\nI wanted to see if I can get my 2nd Core to appear as a 2nd CPU in the guest system so I built the included GENERIC SMP kernel, the build time was just short of 17 minutes. The VM was allocated 256Mb RAM and was running on my 1800mhz Intel iMac. At the time I had Thunderbird, Deerpark, NetNewsWire, Terminal, Adium, Activity Monitor and MS Word (under Rosetta) open.
\nI then took my AMD 1800Mhz with 512Mb RAM machine also running FreeBSD 6.0 and did the same build, the build time on that was 18 minutes.
\nI realise this isn’t the most scientific of tests, but it far exceeds any performance indication on any VM I’ve ever seen, I’m really looking forward to one day having a Bladecenter full of machines capable of running this technology and doing a full VMWare based architecture, the advantages that virtualization brings to the table is staggering. If you ever get a chance to see a real demo of VMWare’s enterprise products I’d strongly suggest you jump at the oppertunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been a fan of virtualization for some time, been a very early user of VMWare years ago in fact version 2 of my iScan appliction was written entirely inside VMWare while stuck in a hotel in Athens around 2001. Things since then has come a long way especially on Intel hardware. Intel has introduced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":610,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions\/610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}