VMWare Fusion on March 2009 Mac Pros

[chelsel]

Inside VMWare Fusion you can configure the # of CPUs for the virtual machine. Given that the new Mac Pros present 2 CPUs for each core... how does this affect VMWare virtual machines?

Does a single CPU VM now see 2 CPUs internally but use 1 core on the host (Mac Pro), or does it use 1 core on the host no matter whether you specify 1 or 2 cpus for the VM? Or, even better, does a single CPU VM use 1/2 a core on the host?

 

[kevink2]

Inside VMWare Fusion you can configure the # of CPUs for the virtual machine. Given that the new Mac Pros present 2 CPUs for each core... how does this affect VMWare virtual machines?

Does a single CPU VM now see 2 CPUs internally but use 1 core on the host (Mac Pro), or does it use 1 core on the host no matter whether you specify 1 or 2 cpus for the VM? Or, even better, does a single CPU VM use 1/2 a core on the host?

Good question. Most likely it appears internally as either 1 or 2 single core chips. On my non ht 08 I don't see multiple cores for each CPU. Since each virtual CPU. I would suspect it depends on the os scheduler for which CPU it runs on.

 

[psingh01]

That's a good question, my guess would be 1cpu in vmware = 1 physical core. Unless Vmware happens to be using a different api to learn about the host system (doubtful), it would see 1 cpu for each core.

 

[gilroykilroy]

4 cores

I'm able to assign 4 cores to my Ubuntu 8.10 partitions.

FYI my personal Octo 2009 2.66 Ghz runs compiles twice as fast as my work Octo 2008 3.0Ghz; each assigned 4 cores and 5Gb memory.

 

[Boneoh]

Here are a link to some info at VMware

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=201-201586xml1&sliceId=&docTypeID=DT_COMMUNITIES_1_1&dialogID=15362515&stateId=1%200%2015364892

Each physical core appears to the system as 2 virtual cores, just like in OS X Activity Monitor. I'm running a VMware virtual machine with Windows 2003 server set to 4 virtual processors and 4 Gb of ram, runs very nice!

 

[kevink2]

That is interesting. That VMWare Fusion has been updated to support 4 virtual cpus now rather than just 2. Probably wouldn't be too useful on a current generation iMac, with just 2 cores (and without one available, I don't know if it will simulate 4 on a dual core system), but for certain cases, would be handy on a Pro. Especially the current one with 16 virtual cores.

The problem with Windows client systems, though, is the limit on physical sockets supported for each version, such as 1 for XP home, 2 for XP pro. Unless this too has changed, XP home would be limited to 1 of the 4,8,16 as appropriate cores on a Mac Pro. If it could be marked to support 2 or 4 cores as a single socket, then I could give my XP Home system a little more CPU power when needed in the future.