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Virtualizing the physical resources of a computing system to improve sharing and utilization has been done
for decades. Virtualization had once been confined to specialized server and mainframe systems, but
improvements in the performance of platforms based on Intel® technology now allow those platforms to
efficiently support virtualization. However, the IA-32 and Itanium® processor architectures pose a number of
significant challenges to virtualization.
The first generation of Intel® Virtualization TechnologyΔ (VT) for IA-32 and Itanium processors provides
hardware support that simplifies processor virtualization, enabling reductions in virtual machine monitor
(VMM) software size and complexity. Resulting VMMs can support a wider range of legacy and future operating
systems (OSs) on the same physical platform while maintaining high performance.
In this paper, we provide details of the virtualization challenges posed by IA-32 and Itanium processors;
present an overview and furnish details of VT-x (Intel Virtualization Technology for the IA-32 architecture)
and VT-i (Intel Virtualization Technology for the Itanium architecture); show how VT-x and VT-i address
virtualization challenges; and finally provide examples of usage of the VT-x and
VT-i architecture.
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