Intel And AMD Virtualization Explained

Wednesday, 08 February 2006 by Michel Roth

These days everything is virtual. Virtualization is hot. The last few days especially the virtualization news on CPU vendors AMD and Intel was plentiful. It's easy to get confused with what's what. That is why I've created this post.

Intel
This flash presentation is a nice animation showing the basics of Intel's virtualization support, highlighting the technical and the business aspects.
It provides an overview of Intel� Virtualization Technology, which can abstract, divide and share hardware resources between multiple operating system environments running simultaneously.

AMD
Native virtualization of x86 architecture requires �unnatural acts� to achieve � leading to increased performance overhead, lower security, and increased complexity. Moving functionality traditionally served by software-based hypervisor into the processor helps to solve these problems. PACIFICA is next logical evolution to the AMD�s Direct Connect Architecture to provide technology for silicon enhanced virtualization PACIFICA allows the software vendors to focus on the value-add, leaving the worry of proper emulation to the processor.
This powerpoint presentation reveals AMD's virtualization possibilities.