Support for Quad Core CPUs....

[SamJolly]

Hi Folks,

I am a new user of VB, and love it !!! I am running a W2K3 Web Server in a VBox VM running over a Vista 64bit Host OS. My hardware is Intel Quad Core Q6600 (2.4 GHZ) with 8GB RAM. However I notice when running a big process in the VM, it maxes out the CPU %, the host stayed rigidly at 25% !!! This is really frustrating as the box is designed for running VMs and I would like VB to use as much CPU as it can. After more investigation I suspect that VB is only using one core per VM hence the 25%. Will this change? For me this is a significant handicap when I have all this CPU power to use !!

I did look at Hyper-V which may support multi-core, but I like the simplicity of VB.

Any comments on this would be hugely appreciated, and when this might be supported?

Thanks,

Sam

[vbox4me2]

SMP support is on the way but not ready yet.

[SamJolly]

Prompt reply. Thanks.

Any idea how long it will be until we get it? 2, 6 12 months?

Thanks,

Sam

[SamJolly]

From your profile "We sell VirtualBox optimized Custom Build Servers", I guess you will also be eager for this facility !!!



Sam

[vbox4me2]

My guess is between 3 and 6 months. I use different methodes to increase or limit cpu power per VM which to some degree does the same thing as smp.

[SamJolly]

Interesting.....

How could I increase CPU allocation to a VM running on vista 64 bit using "other methods"?

Thanks for your time and effort....

Sam...

I used to do some work in Vlaardingen !!

[borrisl]

SMP support is coming sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, it isn't as easy as said. Alot of the base classes have to be rewritten. That being said, I have heard it from the grapevine that it should be very soon. Either way, this is an amazing product that with some maturity has major implications.

[SamJolly]

borris, thanks for that.

I did catch on a previous post from some Sun slides that it will be in V2.5 which is scheduled for Q2 2009. So this should be very soon depending on whether they are able to keep to target.

Looking forwarding to it !! And yes it is great.

Sam

[graysky]

Version 3.0.0 has guest SMP support for up to 32 cores now. See the v3.0.0 changelog for more.

[SawyerX]

It works horrible for me.

Im using WindowsXP guest on win7 host and its horrible slow when I enable more cores of my Q9300.
With one core it works just like 2.x.x did. When I enable 2 cores it slows down and when I enable 4 cores it gets to crawling speeds up to the point where it is useless and host CPU utilization is horrible high. It uses all 4 cores just to open up IE.

It locks up pretty regularly and it was impossible to install windows XP when I had 2 cores enabled. I was able to install just one instanc out of 10 trys but even this locked up later when using.

[SamJolly]

OK, thanks for the reply.

I did pick up on the V3 release, but I have not installed it yet due to some negative comments about the SMP processing. I guess there are some bugs/issues which need ironing out so will wait awhile longer. However the direction is right and the pressure will be on to fix this.

Thanks,

Sam

[graysky]

Actually, I have to agree: version 3.0.0 on my X3360 (xeon quad) runs my guest OS's (Linux and XP) pretty rough. I think it's faster with just one core allocated to the guest and I have tried 2, 3, and 4. They just run very choppy and rough with SMP enabled unfortunately