Sunnyvale (CA) - AMD today announced that it has released its I/O virtualizations specification, formerly code-named "Pacifica," through royalty-free licenses to hardware and software developers. The company said that virtualization will be supported in all of its processors in the first half of this year.

Following Intel's virtualization technology (VT), AMD today said that it has made available a specification that allows computers to take advantage of several "virtual" entities within system and, for example, run multiple operating systems side to side.

As Intel's VT, AMD's technology consists of hardware and software components. Bit while Intel already introduced support for VT in its 900 desktop processors and its Paxville Xeon chips, AMD's processors do not support virtualization at this time. A spokesperson told TG Daily that AMD will release client and server processors that integrate the technology within the first half of 2006.

Previously code-named "Pacifica," AMD has built its virtualization technology based on a collaborative process that included Vmware, XenSource and, according to the company, Microsoft. AMD said that it expects the new technology to result in improved performance and less implementation complexity for computer systems by "managing, partitioning, and securing I/O devices."