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Yonah Virtualization

Dont Hurt Me said:
PPC is going the way of the dinosaur in my view as far as Apple is concerned. I bet all Macs will be Intel by the end of next year.
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There was a time not long ago when I never, EVER thought I'd see THAT sentence on THIS website... :eek: :D

I wish I could go back in time and place a nice wager on whether or not Apple would switch to Intel CPUs and allow Windows to be installed on Macs by mid-2006... :D
 
M-theory said:
...had to be done. :D
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More along the lines of, Intel was running out of features to offer the general public, so why not offer some dual-core (maybe quad-core in the future) with the option to install all OSes of the end-users choice.

Its a win/win situation for Intel, as they would dominate the home PC market while the end-user can install whatever they want. :)
 
Raven VII said:
Why would you need to run both? :rolleyes:

;)
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The computer would feel so ... dirty!!

A good thing until developers start moving to OS X. Then Windows can bugger off forever.

:D
 
crispoe said:
Microsoft discontinues IE for Mac. Why? Because its going to run natively in windows mode, similar to how Apple runs X11. I mentioned this on Osnews a few days ago...
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MS quit development of IE for Mac in 2003. The current noise is just MS notifying everyone that they're dropping support for what they quit writing two years ago.

Just like they dropped support for Window95, etc.

So much for a lovely theory...
 
Peace said:
If Apple doesn't change the BIOS wouldn't this make it easier for Windows users to install OSX on their machines?
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Who says they're going to use BIOS?

They use Open Firmware on the PPC machines, and not having any legacy Intel issues, it's likely they'll be using Intel's EFI, instead of BIOS, because it provides functionality closer to OF than does BIOS.

And they've specifically said that they will not be using OF on their Intel systems.
 
dernhelm said:
One CPU (or core) is used by one OS, the other is used by the other. QUOTE]

Unlikely that it would work like that. That would mean that if one OS isn't doing much at the moment, the other OS would still only have one processor. What really happens is that each OS sees two processors, but from the point of view of one OS these two processors sometimes stop doing any work for a short time (that is when they do work for the other OS). So if you have Linux and MacOS X running, and Linux only uses 10% of one CPU at the moment, then MacOS X still has two CPUs running at almost full speed.
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dambro1978 said:
if i have 2 os on one computer can i interchange files between them?
for example: i have a pdf in osx can i drag and drop it into wiondows or vice-versa?
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You can already with VirtualPC.

And cut and paste between Windows and Mac works too.

There's special software as part of VirtualPC which you install into Windows to allow the sharing.

There would have to be something similar written to do that between VT partitions (that's partitions in the CPU not disk). I'm not even sure if Intel's VT allows that. You might find a partition is completely isolated from the others.

Personally, I find the features in VirtualPC to enable sharing are essential so if VT partitions don't allow that, I'll stick with VirtualPC.
 
dernhelm said:
One CPU (or core) is used by one OS, the other is used by the other.
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I haven't read anything regarding Intel doing it like this. This method was mentioned regarding PowerPC virtualisation though.

I guess it depends on how a company implements a technology.
 
firestarter said:
Felix is right here - and makes a great point.

Please people, stop assuming what this virtualisation technology does - 'cos it doesn't actually do that much!!

All that Intel are doing is patching a stupid mistake in their instruction set. On x86, if you run an application like virtual PC, the programs running under virtual PC can't have access to all of the processor instructions - as some of those instructions if executed would upset the host operating system on which virtual PC is running.

This leads to a load of complexity if you're running a second OS on top of the first (google for VMWare to see what sort of app currently does this on x86).

ALL THAT INTEL ARE DOING is patching this problem, so that VMWare/Virtual PC can cleanly host another operating system. To run two at once you'd still need to buy an app like VPC to manage the things - Intel's technology in no way makes your machine able to support two operating systems at once from the BIOS, or any of the other whacky scenarios that people have drempt up.

As a user, you're not going to see any difference from this tech - all the fuss that's being generated is Intel's marketing selling what is essentially a bug fix.

They have white papers on their web site that you can read (I've read them) if you want more insight on this.
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With all due respect, I don't think you grasped the full potential of VT. VT is more than a bug fix. While combining VT with AMT, you get some pretty valuable features from a security and managability standpoint. It might be invisible to the consumer, but they would benifit from it.
 
dernhelm said:
You guys really don't get hardware virtualization. Both OSs run on the hardware directly. There is no emulation, context switching, any of that stuff. One CPU (or core) is used by one OS, the other is used by the other. You are partitioning your system. The trick is virtualizing your ethernet, firewire, etc. But that is all stuff that they figured out long ago on their "big iron" systems where this tech was pioneered.
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Even with the hardware there to make virtualization a simpler task, you still need a hypervisor. I can't see Apple providing that, or Microsoft. You'll still need VMware or Xen or preferably an updated VirtualPC.
 
Game subsystem

I wonder if it would be possible for Apple to generate a execution subsystem that would allow specific Windows programs (such as games) to be run without needing the entire operating system to be loaded (and/or paid for). As another poster said, if you could just double click on a game and have it run, this would be tremendous for Apple. You don't also need to be able to drag and drop files in Windows.
 
granex said:
I wonder if it would be possible for Apple to generate a execution subsystem that would allow specific Windows programs (such as games) to be run without needing the entire operating system to be loaded (and/or paid for).
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Wouldn't a lot of games need DirectX?
 
Forget DirectX, what I really want is the Havoc physics engine to find it's way onto the Mac. It's killing me how many great games we're missing out on because of Havoc. The most recent one being Age of Empires III, which is the most frusturating for me to miss out on anyway.
 
A Historic Oportunity To Expand Mac Market Share!

Apple has now a historic oportunity to set new standards AND TO EXPAND MAC MARKET SHARE.

A computer that can natively boot as Mac OS X, Linux or Windows. Even better, boot whatever and then switch in real time to any other and even have two or the three of them on screen.

This alone will sell Macs by millions to many people, to Universities, corporations, etc. Our University has many computer rooms. All are PC-Windoze because they must run Windows and Linux. What a shame for Apple right now! But this new Mac will change things and all our new computer rooms will be built with such machines if they can run all three OSes and if they are competitively priced.

This triple-boot machine will have a tremendous impact: people will finally know the wonders of Mac OS X. Many of them will buy such Macs because they can still use Windows or Linux (many people do not buy Macs currently just because of that!) but then will be exposed to Mac OS X. Many will then switch for ever to Mac OS X.

Apple: go, go, go for it!
 
Some of us are stuck using Windows at times. For me it is the one app I have to demo for a service that is Windows based and one app for a piece of medical equipment. Both are small and run fine under VPC, but without VPC I wouldn't have been able to move to Macs.

What I am hoping for is a new VPC that will be significantly faster than the current one. I don't want a dual boot Mac, just the ability to open 2000 Pro for a few minutes now and then. (I don't have 2000 Pro connected to the internet so it's totally isolated, which is very nice.)

Somehow I think MS bought VPC without the knowledge that Apple was moving to Intel and now they are working like mad to bring both VPC and Office over to the Mactel environment. It's going to be a lot of work for both apps and old Billie G is probably a bit pissed about it.

We'll see in 19 days . . .
 
Great news

This will encourage more people to switch. Why?

Because you will be able to run some Windows only program (in-house programs etc) when needed for business users.

It will allow Linux adminstrators to use the Mac.

It will be able to run gamers collections (if they want) so they don't see a loss in moving from Windows.

And most important it is insurance against the day (and I believe it is coming) that Microsoft drops Office on the Mac.
 
kenaustus said:
Somehow I think MS bought VPC without the knowledge that Apple was moving to Intel and now they are working like mad to bring both VPC and Office over to the Mactel environment. It's going to be a lot of work for both apps and old Billie G is probably a bit pissed about it.
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I think MS bought VPC so they could run multiple Windows virtual machines on one system. Basically - MS does its best to make its latest OS can run stuff written for Windows 3.1, DOS, 95... and that backwards compatibility restricts it sometimes. If they could presume that history didn't matter, and then run the old stuff via VPC, they'd be more free to develop their stuff. (edit: And of course it allows multiple virtual machines for testing and development purposes)

And if that's the case, what does Intel's Virtualisation Technology do for MS? One poster said that VT still requires something like Virtual PC to work. Someone else said VT does the job of Virtual PC (thus VPC is unnecessary). I had assumed the VT was, in some ways, like the virtual 286 that Intel provided built into 386s and above... and wouldn't really need a VPC.

Anyone got some references/links that definitively answer that?
 
gnasher729 said:
Unlikely that it would work like that. That would mean that if one OS isn't doing much at the moment, the other OS would still only have one processor. What really happens is that each OS sees two processors, but from the point of view of one OS these two processors sometimes stop doing any work for a short time (that is when they do work for the other OS). So if you have Linux and MacOS X running, and Linux only uses 10% of one CPU at the moment, then MacOS X still has two CPUs running at almost full speed.
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Great idea. But that is not how hardware virtualization works. Look it up for Pete's sake! You don't have to believe me.
 
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