Intel VT? Uhmm?

[minty]

Hello

I was hoping someone could tell me, in layman terms, what this is?

I went over Intel and Wikipedia and I still dont get it :?

Intel® Virtualization Technology
Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) is a set of hardware enhancements to Intel® server and client platforms that can improve traditional software-based virtualization solutions. This collection of premier Intel designed and manufactured silicon technologies delivers new and improved computing benefits for home and business users, and IT managers.

Virtualization solutions enhanced by Intel VT will allow a platform to run multiple operating systems and applications in independent partitions. Using virtualization capabilities, one computer system can function as multiple "virtual" 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.

Since Im getting a E6420 soon and I know it has VT, I'd like to know what I can do with it.

In the past Ive used VMWare solutions for having guests OS' running on my main OS, and it's very cool and useful for me.

BUT... I dont know if somehow Intel VT relates to this (wikipedia mentions VMWare from time to time in that article), in a hardware level :?

Thanks for your time

 

[MU_Engineer]

You can use it to run hardware-dependent virtualization programs. One I know of is the Kernel-based Virtual Machine in the Linux 2.6.20 and later kernels. Perhaps VMware will support it in the future.

 

[sonoran63]

This explains it far better than I could: Whitepaper on VT. Pages 8 & 9 describe some of the problems with software virtualization, and how VT is designed to help it perform better.

* Not speaking for Intel Corp *

 

[dragonsprayer]

it lets u set a program that maps parts of the cpu. memory, gpu for a virtual pc - the advantage is multiple pc's from one real one or the ability to wipe the entire V-pc if it is corrupted.

 

[minty]

Thanks for the replies guys

However I think Im too dumb because even after reading that whitepaper I still dont get it :?
Guess all that "corporate" mumbo jumbo confuses me :?

So far... Ive used VMWare like, you install it on a host OS, where its run with restricted privileges (likely Ring 3 or 1 -dont know if 1 is for kernel-level drivers and the like for example). Then I create an image of a guest OS, that is run inside VMWare.

So (supposing VMWare would support Intel-VT), if I use Intel-VT, it means for instance, VMWare will be able to allocate itself in Ring-0, which means it will have access to lets say, my GPU, instead of using a crappy "customized" graphic card "driver" (the thing you have to install to get "better" display abilities but yet it wont letcha run 3D software and the like IIRC)?

Thanks for your time

 

[amnotanoobie]

From what I could understand about the thing is that, instead of simply software allocating resources and processing, the processor would now do part of the work. Or at least from what I understand, there are now hardware routines which could help accelerate or ease Virtualization. But hey what do I know? :lol:

 

[mcnaugha]

Forget about other system components than your CPU.

Basically it turns out that, a lot of the time, your CPU has some spare time. Intel wrote some fancy code into their VT-capable CPUs so that this spare processing time could be utilised to run another virtual PC(s).

Software written to take advantage of hardware VT gets to run faster... almost like it has a real CPU of its own. Previously virtualisation software had to emulate a processor in software... which is ultimately much slower.

My Virtual PCs in VPC 2007 run literally as fast as my real PC.

 

[minty]

Thanks for the replies

From what I could understand about the thing is that, instead of simply software allocating resources and processing, the processor would now do part of the work. Or at least from what I understand, there are now hardware routines which could help accelerate or ease Virtualization. But hey what do I know? :lol:

Forget about other system components than your CPU.

Basically it turns out that, a lot of the time, your CPU has some spare time. Intel wrote some fancy code into their VT-capable CPUs so that this spare processing time could be utilised to run another virtual PC(s).

Software written to take advantage of hardware VT gets to run faster... almost like it has a real CPU of its own. Previously virtualisation software had to emulate a processor in software... which is ultimately much slower.

My Virtual PCs in VPC 2007 run literally as fast as my real PC.

So, your replies are similar. I guess and if you are both correct which I assume )), I was actually giving it too much thought when in the end all it does from a non-intel engineer perspective is to give quite some speed boost for any virtualization software like VirtualPC or VMWare