[fedora-virt] intel vt versus amd-v?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 11:57:14AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   a friend wants to buy a server (probably dell) with HW virt support,
> and is wondering if there are any current clear advantages of intel
> over amd.  the only observation i had time to make was that, if one
> checks out entry-level servers from dell (ballpark $1000 cdn), the amd
> opteron systems appear to be somewhat less expensive than equivalent
> intel-based systems.
> 
>   further thoughts?

The more recent Intel and AMD parts have extra virtualization features
which make virtualization more efficient -- primarily Intel Extended
Page Tables (EPT) and AMD Nested Page Tables (NPT).  So your friend
should look at the chips which support that, basically Intel Nehalem
and the quad-core AMD Opterons (previously known as Barcelona).

If he wants to assign devices directly to guests, maybe look at Intel VT-d
/ AMD IOMMU.  Not used it myself.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
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