I think that is a tongue-in-cheek reply that has nothing to do with my request. Regardless of price, both VMware Workstation and VirtualBox have their pros and cons. There is nothing wrong with entertaining the idea of a new feature in VirtualBox and having a polite conversation about it. I certainly didn't intend my post to be demanding anything, I was merely voicing why I would find such a feature useful.loukingjr wrote:@ Legorol, Is VMWare Workstation free now? (rhetorical).
I am not sure what the correct technical description is or how it is exactly achieved in VMware Workstation. However, I wasn't referring to physical CPUs that don't have VT-x at all. I was trying to refer to a guest seeing a virtual CPU that has VT-x capabilities, which I think is what's needed to run a hypervisor in a VM.mpack wrote:Do I gather that you mean a fully synthetic VT-x that works on CPUs that don't have it? I can't speak for the devs but... that ain't gonna happen. The whole point of VT-x is to do things that you can't do efficiently in software alone. It wouldn't need to exist otherwise. That and CPU's without that feature form a rapidly shrinking market of penniless users... hence ISTM targetting them is not a sensible use of resources.Legorol wrote:virtualized VT-x
OTOH, if you want to do that work yourself and then donate the code then that would certainly turn my calculation upside down.
VMware Workstation has an option that says "Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI". It still requires the physical (host) CPU to have VT-x. Once you enable this however, the guest in the VM then sees a (virtual) CPU that apprently has VT-x, and you can run a hypervisor in the guest. I have no idea how this is achieved, whether it's some sort of pass-through of the physical CPU's VT-x feature or a synthetic VT-x provided for the guest.
When I was referring to pre-Haswell CPUs, I was referring to the "VMCS Shadowing" technology that's in the new Haswell CPUs. My limited understanding is that this technology is supposed to somehow make exposing VT-x to a guest easier. However, VMware Workstation's example shows that this is not a strict requirement for having virtualized VT-x in a guest, presumably as long as the physical (host) CPU has VT-x.
I understand that development effort for VirtualBox is limited, and I don't mean anything in this post to be construed as any kind of expectation. I would just like to add my voice to the growing list in this thread