Virtual PC 7 Preview?

[BornAgainMac]

Well, while all this emulation technical discussion is just fascinating, I for one am thrilled to see item 1 on the change list: A new icon. Whew! I got to tell ya that I was just an emotional wreck about that previous icon. I couldn't stand the old icon and was afraid I wouldn't be able to run VPC 7 when it came out since it was so incompatible with my sense of style. But now that the icon has been changed I have something to hope for.

I suppose what would also really make me want to buy VPC 7 is actually needing VPC 7 for something.

That's funny. Usually Microsoft changes the colors, fonts, or icons between versions because they don't change much else. It was the number one feature at the top of the list.

I am excited about this upgrade from Microsoft because it looks like a promising must-have upgrade compared to going from version 5 to version 6. I have a G5 and a G3. It's unbearable on the G3. I wish I didn't sell my G4 because it seemed very usable on it. I would even say it was fast because my old PC (PIII 450mhz) wasn't that much faster except for games.

 

[atszyman]

Are you sure that VPC7 will be sold in version without a Windows OS? I think VPC7 will be the first non-free VPC update since MS took over VPC from Connectix (correct me if I'm wrong there, I'm not 100% sure on that), and I have the feeling that they won't be offering it for sale in a version that doesn't come with a Windows OS as well, which would raise the price quite a bit. Anyone have any info on what versions of VPC7 will be availble when it's released?

- JonYo

Well they still offer version 6 without Windows so there's a good bet that they will still do that for 7. Doesn't really matter anyway since my college discout should apply to VPC now since it is now a M$ product.

 

[mactastic]

I could care less about games... but if I can run AutoCad on my mac fast enough to make it unnecessary for me to build a PC box for one app I'll be a seriously happy camper. Well, two apps if you count Project. I only need it at home, I've got an XP box at work already.

Now, if I could emulate OS X at work, and XP at home at speeds that were acceptable that would be awesome!

 

[ClimbingTheLog]

Please open up your definition of "emulation" to include situations where the emulated hardware has the same instruction set as the real hardware.

"Instruction set emulation" is not part of Virtual PC/Virtual Server for Windows, but emulation of a virtual hardware machine is part of it. The common use of the term "emulate" in computer science is to describe any situation where a program sees non-existent hardware. Instruction set emulation is just a subset of the common use of the term.

Virtual PC emulates a physical computer so exactly that the applications users install in them don’t distinguish the virtual machine from a physical computer.

You're right but the companies sometimes play fast and loose with terms so some readers are bound to be confused. For instance with VMWare, you'd think VM stood for Virtual Machine, but only the CPU is virutalized, the hardware is emulated. VPC is the same on x86. But the marketing quote you have above, if the reader were to read the final 'a' as 'the' would imply a full virtual machine, but it's not. A tiny change like that effecting the meaning so much at least suggests that marketing isn't being careful to make the appropriate distinctions.

 

[AidenShaw]

But the marketing quote you have above, if the reader were to read the final 'a' as 'the' would imply a full virtual machine, but it's not.

Why is it "not".

Please explain what a "full virtual machine" is, and how VPC 7 (or the current VMware product) fails that test.

Sorry to be sticky, but there are so many people who are hung up on "ISA emulation" vs. "hardware emulation" vs. "ring 0 emulation" that one needs to pin down the words that one is using.

 

[iostream.h]

This now makes complete sense as to how the XBox 2 will work.

 

[dmjones]

Hope It Comes Sooner Rather Than Later

I don't have a huge use for Windows, but it will be nice to be able to run XP and the latest version of Office for Windows on my G5. I am a freelance graphic designer and also do some freelance prepress work for a print shop that I'm friendly with. Every now and then I need to be able to open a Publisher file and get it to output to a Mac-based imagesetter or DTP system. I have tried using VPC 4/Win200/Office2000 on my PowerBook G4 (500MHz), but it is really slow and often doesn't come out right. When VPC 7 finally shows up I plan on buying it along with Office XP (or whatever the most current version is called), Adobe Type Manager and Acrobat Professional. That way I can hopefully output decent PDF files that will work cross-platform and output correctly on my printshop's RIP. Boy, what we won't do to make a buck!

 

[ClimbingTheLog]

Why is it "not".

Please explain what a "full virtual machine" is, and how VPC 7 (or the current VMware product) fails that test.

A real virtualizer presents the hardware it's running on. Like the old IBM VM mainframes. In a PC, for instance, you'd have a Radon 7500 video card. With a real virtualizer the "virtual PC" would see a Radeon 7500 video card. The virtualizer would save state, switch VM's, do the work, restore state, repeat.

Instead, in a VPC 7 Virtual PC you see an ATI Mach 64 in the virtual machine because it emulates that piece of hardware. (I'm just making up the product names here).

VPC 7 does, however virtualize the CPU. It saves the registers, executes the code to be executed, then restores the registers. That's vitualized.

 

[Westside guy]

Are you sure that VPC7 will be sold in version without a Windows OS? I think VPC7 will be the first non-free VPC update since MS took over VPC from Connectix (correct me if I'm wrong there, I'm not 100% sure on that), and I have the feeling that they won't be offering it for sale in a version that doesn't come with a Windows OS as well, which would raise the price quite a bit.

If they tried to do this their sales would drop to zero because everyone (on the x86 platform anyway) would buy VMware instead. Mac folks may not be aware of this, but on the PC side of things VPC is the upstart - VMware has owned this market for a while.

 

[GregA]

An XP Pro machine can have a terminal access it from the network, and that terminal displays whatever the XP Pro user would see.

IE5.5 for Mac will also connect to that, so the Mac can be a terminal to the XP Pro machine.

Couldn't MS take that a step further, so that there is no graphics drawn by Virtual PC under emulation, but it is all drawn via the "terminal" running on Mac OS X?

I'm just wondering if this would be an easier development for MS, as well as using a PPC-native graphics engine.

 

[qubex]

2. Modern computers (and those of the foreseeable future) are deterministic finite automata. They do not have access to infinite tapes, and are not capable of simulating any other DFA. (the number of states that a C64 can be in is fewer than my g4 iBook, ergo a surjection onto its states is impossible.)

"A Commodore-64 with a stack of punched cards."

 

[Beck446]

I guess this is sort-of off topic, but did anyone see the CNet article today where MS is yet again delaying pieces of Longhorn? This time they are removing the new search feature that lets you search via tags/info content - the feature they dub WinFS. It should become fully operable in 2009!

http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5212077.html?tag=nefd.lede

I'd be shocked if this powerful new VPC software came out on schedule.

 

[KingOfPain]

For instance with VMWare, you'd think VM stood for Virtual Machine,

Guess what, it does!
The only thing with VM in the name that isn't a virtual machine is the JVM.

but only the CPU is virutalized, the hardware is emulated.

Just like with *any* other virtual machine. It is possible to virtualize a processor when previleged instructions cause an exception when it is tried to execute them in user mode. These instructions are then simulated by the VMM (virtual machine monitor), just like all the other hardware the OS might use and that shouldn't be accessed by several OSes at the same time.

The only reason why you think that there is a difference to VMs running on IBM mainframes, eg., is that you simply don't have several OSes running on the same monitor (because you are using terminals), and because a mainframe doesn't have a soundcard or other fancy hardware you find in PCs.
But when an operating system wants to access any other hardware apart from the user mode instructions of the processor, everything goes through the VMM, no matter if the VMM is running on a PC or a mainframe.

 

[KingOfPain]

Then you miss the point of a Virtual PC. It is a virtual pc!

Indeed, it's a PC emulator, not a Windows emulator.

What you're looking for is a code translator (like FX!32 did for the Alpha chips to run x86 code.)

That also isn't the right comparison, because FX!32 only emulates the CPU (first via interpretation, and then partial static binary translation), but it's only for running WinNT/x86 applications on WinNT/Alpha, so no other hardware is emulator and even the API is the same.

I guess what he is looking for is something like Darwine.

 

[bradz_id]

If it doesn't support DirectX, then it DOESN'T have native video card hardware support. It must mean that it forwards or "links" the OpenGL language straight from the game to Mac OS X's OpenGL engine. I wish Apple would be a bit more up to date with OpenGL myself. OpenGL is at 1.5 and we're stuck at 1.3. DirectX would be much better stillbecause it would require a LLT less effort to port games in most cases and they would look nicer. The only nice OpenGL game out there is Doom 3 which is VERY NICE!

 

[AidenShaw]

A real virtualizer presents the hardware it's running on. Like the old IBM VM mainframes. In a PC, for instance, you'd have a Radon 7500 video card. With a real virtualizer the "virtual PC" would see a Radeon 7500 video card.

I'll argue that is exactly *not* what you want. (I'll also say that if you can tell what the real hardware is, it's not virtualized....)

One of the main points of "virtual machines" is that they are all identical. I can take my VMware virtual machine from an 800 MHz PIII and move it to a 3GHz P4 if it needs more power. I don't need to worry that the PIII has a Rage video and an IDE disk card, but the P4 has a Quadro and Ultra320 SCSI and Fibre Channel.

It's very important for the virtual machine to be identical no matter what the underlying hardware is.

Note that you can have complete, portable virtualization and still have full hardware video acceleration. What you need is for VPC to provide a driver for the "VPC Virtual Video Card".

Every VM sees the VPC Virtual Video Card, yet underneath that the driver could do shortcuts to bypass emulation and go directly to the accelerated card.

VMware does some of that today - when you install the VMware Tools you get the "VMware SVGA II" video card and the "VMware Pointing Device" mouse. These give better video and mouse performance by bypassing some of the pure hardware emulation and going through the VMM directly to the real hardware.

 

[MarkCollette]

I've heard that my iMac G3 (333MHz)'s GPU isn't fully supported under OS X. Maybe 3D accelleration? I'm not talking about Quartz Extreme, it's something else. Maybe someone can clarify this.

Anyways, does anyone have an idea if OS X doesn't accellerate my GPU fully, what affect that would have on VPC 7 doing native GPU stuff. Could I potentially end up with a situation where MS does accelerate stuff, and emulated games would run faster?

 

[qubex]

VPC still has to address your computer's hardware through the OS. So, if OSX doesn't support a given feature, VPC certainly will not be able to take advantage of it.

I think iMacs with a G3 CPU don't have any GPU. But I could be wrong.

 

[MarkCollette]

VPC still has to address your computer's hardware through the OS. So, if OSX doesn't support a given feature, VPC certainly will not be able to take advantage of it.

I think iMacs with a G3 CPU don't have any GPU. But I could be wrong.

All computers with a screen have a GPU. My iMac's GPU uses some Rage chipset, which has support for 3D acceleration. Mac OS 9.x and before use that for OpenGL, etc., but OS X does not, I believe.

The question is, would DirectX in VPC be layered on top of some high layer in OS X, or would it be done at a lower layer, where maybe it wouldn't matter that the rest of OS X doesn't support it.

 

[gopher]

I've heard that my iMac G3 (333MHz)'s GPU isn't fully supported under OS X. Maybe 3D accelleration? I'm not talking about Quartz Extreme, it's something else. Maybe someone can clarify this.

Anyways, does anyone have an idea if OS X doesn't accellerate my GPU fully, what affect that would have on VPC 7 doing native GPU stuff. Could I potentially end up with a situation where MS does accelerate stuff, and emulated games would run faster?

Forget about the iMac G3 333's GPU for VirtualPC. You may be able to run Windows 98, but VirtualPC 6 for the Mac running Windows 2000 require at least a G4/500 Mhz, 512MB of RAM, and 10 GB of hard disk space free. Double that requirement for Windows XP.

 

[boberto4]

Registration Required for Windows in Virtual PC?

Hi,

I'm considering buying Virtual PC 7 but I need to know whether it requires you to register Windows XP if you buy the version that doesn't include it. I really need to save all the cash I can. I already have a copy of Windows XP and it will save me $100 bucks if I don't need to register.

Thanks,

Robert

 

[7on]

You'll need to activate yes.

I remember that project a while back, RealPC, had real hardware acceleration. Well, it saw that your machine had a Voodoo2 card which game fast performance and 3d-iness. However, that was before MS sued them. Oh well, I hope MS delivers and it won't be another Halo thing (i.e. as MS delayed a Mac program only to release a ****ty version much later).