Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)

Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)

Virtualization technology is nothing new. There is some software on the market that enables virtualization and probably VMware is the most famous one. With this technique, a single CPU can act if it were several CPUs running in parallel,

You may confuse virtualization with multitasking or even with HyperThreading. On multitasking, there is a single operating system and several programs running in parallel. On virtualization, you can have several operating systems running in parallel, each one with several programs running. Each operating system runs on a “virtual CPU” or “virtual machine”. And HyperThreading simulates two CPUs were there is just one physical CPU for balancing performance using SMP (Symmetric Multi Processing), and these two CPUs cannot be used separately.



Benefits of VT

From Intel datasheet: “Intel Virtualization Technology requires a computer system with a processor, chipset, BIOS, Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) and for some uses, certain platform software enabled for it. Functionality, performance or other benefit will vary depending on hardware and software configurations. Intel Virtualization Technology-enabled BIOS and VMM applications are currently in development.”

So far, VMware Workstation 5 (which costs between USD 189.00 and USD 199.00) and VMware Player (which is free but you need to have virtual machines images created with Workstation or other software ready; on http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/vm/ you can find a lot of pre-build virtual machines for several different operating systems) support Intel’s Virtualization Technology.

It is not clear to us if Intel will release any VMM software on its own or if they will just wait for other vendor to change their virtualization software to support VT.

As for the BIOS, the solution is to wait for motherboard manufacturers to release VT-enabled BIOS (or at least certify that your current motherboard BIOS works fine with VT).

On the good side VT promises to have a better performance than VMWare, but we will have to wait until VT VMM software reaches the market to check if this is really true or it is just Intel propaganda.