Re: General question about Intel and AMD virtualiztion support in hardware

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Chris Adams wrote:
Once upon a time, KC8LDO <kc8ldo@xxxxxxxx> said:
Who seems to have the edge in hardware virtualization Intel or AMD? I've heard comments both ways with one IT person suggesting that AMD was the way to go.

As far as functionality, I believe they are pretty much equivalent.

If you are buying a desktop and want virtualization, then (the last time
I looked), almost all (if not all) AMD CPUs have hw-virt extensions,
while Intel seems to reserve it for the higher-end (read: more
expensive) CPUs.

If you are going to do anything but play with VM you will probably have one with hardware VM support. The prices are not Celeron (<$100) prices, but they are only $100-150 more from Intel. I have some of each, at one time the AMD did a better job of real mode handling, I still have a need to run Win-95 in a VM, and it does way too much in real mode. Haven't tried it on recent Intel, I leave well enough alone.

Also are there extra "features" supported under the various open source virtualization systems, KVM and Xen, under one manufacture but not the other of any real significance?

KVM is essentially a driver for the hw-virt CPU extensions, so of course
it supports them. :-)  Xen also supports hw-virt I believe.

It does, but unless I missed something, Fedora doesn't support Xen, because the patches needed aren't in the mainline kernel and took too much effort to maintain. I have RHEL, so it's not an issue for me.

I would say right now that Intel has the edge in performance per watt, if power use and heat are an issue at all. Other than that, not an issue. But be sure the BIOS doesn't disable the VM capability, some vendors do that.

--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@xxxxxxx>
  "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot

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