28th
March
2007
Improved Virtualization Support in Intel CPUs
posted in Technology |AnandTech has an update on future Intel CPUs that discusses improvements to hardware-based virtulization. In the current generation of CPUs, some of these key instructions are very expensive and this article claims they are sped up by 25-75%. This seems like a good reason to hold off for the Penryn generation of chips, especially for new servers. Virtualization seems like the only way to go for any new data-center deployments- a quad core 1600mhz FSB 3.2GHZ CPU machine in the late summer seems like a really nice bet.
For my desktop machines this seems less important but I’m still planning on holding off for the 45nm “shrink” to get a new desktop and it looks like this is going to be where that shows up.