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Yonah Virtualization

aegisdesign said:
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.
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Aha - someone who actually understands the technology 😀 . Yes, you do need a hypervisor (or something like that). IBM provides it with the Power5 stuff it has produced, Apple (or someone) would need to provide it with the Yonah chips in order to make use of it. And believe me, EMC has been chomping at the bit for a way to make VMWare more effective. They will put whatever resources they can into working directly with VT-enabled hardware.

I agree that Apple won't likely do that for such a niche market in the short term. But they probably will eventually - and if they make a mac-mini/dvr/home theater box they could have quite a coup on their hands if they did it using this type of technology to partition the hardware up. The box could perform any computing task you set to it, and still always be live for TV, etc.

Microsoft's home theater stuff may would also benefit from this if they implemented it in a way that they knew what they were doing.
 
Think about it kind of like weening a druggie off of crack... youve gotta do it slowly. This way the Windoze users can have their windows even if they "switch". Though I garantee they will find themselves hardly touching it after a few weeks... 🙂
 
Hypervisors like VMware are good in theory, but there are many problems with them such as when using VMware in an environment where MAC addresses are used as unique identifiers (UID), it is required to manually configure the MAC address for each virtual machine to ensure each is actually unique. This is a pain in the a$$, and too low-level to be practical.

It's a nice thought, but VMware has a long way to go. Virtual PC is still the best solution. Once OS X86 hits the market, you can expect a new version of Virtual PC that is extremely optimized (since it's running on native architecture) and you can probably even expect a hack or two to be able to dual boot into Windows if you so desire, which is better then any emulator. 😎

In other words, if you want a Hypervisor that will allow you to switch between different Operating Systems just as fast as you can switch users (with that cool cube effect) then look for Apple to write their own in-house. And obviously they won't bother with it unless they can be convinced that it will be profitable for them, for example, if it would make everyone twice as likely to switch etc. Furthermore, Apple couldn't sell Windows XP or have systems come preinstalled with both OSes unless they paid Microsoft royalties, and don't expect that to happen anytime before hell freezes over. 😛
 
Sunrunner said:
Think about it kind of like weening a druggie off of crack... youve gotta do it slowly. This way the Windoze users can have their windows even if they "switch". Though I garantee they will find themselves hardly touching it after a few weeks... 🙂
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This is a nice thought if you don't actually have to use Windows, such is the case for some. But there are those of us that utilize applications that are only available on Windows for our work or everyday lives, and therefor we can't simply just "switch" that easily. And Virtual PC is currently 100% a software emulator, which makes it slow and not very practicle for everyday use. Think of it as Reverse Rosetta but for the whole damn OS. And that's just ridiculous.
 
chicagdan said:
Everyone keeps talking about the dual core aspect of Yonah, but perhaps the best feature is VT, Intel's Virtualization Technology. According to this article, VThttp://www.nordichardware.com/news,2670.html is basically VMWare on a chip -- meaning that the new Intel Mac's will be fully capable of running OS X, Windows, Linux, OS/2, whatever, simultaneously in a system much like fast user switching, all with hyperthreading and dual core capability.

So everyone who keeps asking "can I dual boot?" ... "will there be a Virtual PC" ... you have no idea. This is going to be so much better. And as for the naysayers who cry "how do we know Apple will allow this?" remember Brian Croll's comment that Apple will not create any hardware to block users from installing Windows.

Finally, as for the persistent, annoying “why would you need to run both” comments, please just shut up. I have a PowerBook for 99 percent of what I do on a computer, but I also like to play Full Tilt poker, I run an Action PC Football league and play in a Diamond Mind Baseball league. These three pieces of software have required me to keep a 1998 IBM Aptiva connected (along with my PowerBook) via a KVM switch (and yes, a 7 year old computer IS better than Virtual PC) and I’m so, so sick of that ugly black box. When Mac on Intel and parallel OS’s come out, I’m going to sledge hammer the IBM.
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Agh!! Need such computer advice! A teenage friend of mine (15) builds awesome custom PC's (obviously, running on Windows XP), and I have been considering buying one perhaps alongside a new iBook, but now with this, I am totally lost where to go. Of course this is awesome, but I... agh. Why do such beautiful things as computers cause so much stress?🙁 🙄
 
amateurmacfreak said:
Agh!! Need such computer advice! A teenage friend of mine (15) builds awesome custom PC's (obviously, running on Windows XP), and I have been considering buying one perhaps alongside a new iBook, but now with this, I am totally lost where to go. Of course this is awesome, but I... agh. Why do such beautiful things as computers cause so much stress?🙁 🙄
Click to expand...
I don't see how this should be causing you stress. If you wait another 6 months before making your purchase, then you will know just how practicle it is to have both OSes running on a Mac. Check back at this forum, then make your decision. No worries. 😉
 
Wow... sarcasm is truly a lost art on those forums. People keep quoting my post and "correcting" me, even though it's obvious the post is sarcastic because 1: there's a winky at the end, and 2: it's a direct copy and paste from the OP's post, with one word changed.

🙄
 
Donm said:
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.
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I think you missed my point. While VT is definitely beneficial, I'm concerned at the number of postings which imagine schemes of multi booting, multi OSes running together just on the BIOS layer etc.

As you agree - for most consumers this will be invisible, and the benefits VT provides will be enjoyed mainly in improved VMWare / Virtual PC etc.

Intel is hyping this as a consumer breakthrough. For OS and hardware geeks it's nice tech, but for regular consumers (the people posting to this forum) there's not going to be anything particularly wild or revolutionary coming out of this.

The MacRumors readership is new to Intel's powerful marketing mojo - I think folk need to learn to take these things with a healthy dose of cynicism...
 
I think the rumor mills are missing the boat as to what will appear January.

I found out about the improved Intel virtualization support about a year ago and that the virtualization's software component was open source and that Intel had funded the startup that wrote the software.

The article that pointed me to this info claimed this virtualization made the OS obsolete but my take on the info was that it made the processor obsolete and actually greatly increased the importance of the OS.

This kind of self obsoleting behavior is typical of technology companies that are running behind the curve and loosing their perspective on the business side of their sector of the market.

So I wrote a suggestion to Apple that this could be used to make use of artificial intelligence in an OS in a fairly simple and straight forward way.

For every instance of OSs launch two instances of OSs of Mac OS X, one that the user uses and then a second that runs at the level just below the virtualization software and have it monitor and build statistics on the code level and what the user does and then based on these parameters the "Observing" OS could self-configure or self-optimize at the system and at compiler level -- a self-optimizing system.

I got really excited just because this setup would be great for installing debugger code that could just stay there all of the time in the observing system and still be quite transparent -- I am a tester so those things excite me !!!

Then Apple released Tiger and Jobs gave a mysterious reference to the next system, Jaguar, making it sound like it would be a real cool update.

And then Jobs announced the intended move to Intel, something I have been telling them to do for years.

And now on the eve of the Intel transition the rumor mills seem to think the Mac-mini is going to Intel and be a multi-media HDTV box without having any specialized integrations with new products from Apple.

I think Apple might ship something TOTALLY new and revolutionary this time !!!

I think the new Mac-mini is likely to support WiFi for video and stereo sound and instead of Apple shipping new iBooks the INTELigent iBooks and perhaps powerbook rumors are actually confused with thin-client monitors that will receive the WiFi video and be a very thin and light weight remote computing client, touch-screen monitor with a BT keyboard add-on, to the INTELigent Mac-mini which will be upgradable to high-end power.

It is the power efficiency of the new Intel processors and perhaps some of the new small WiFi cards that make this kind of remote computing screen good enough to be an Apple product. MS and others tried to implement this about two years ago but they all failed for some reason.

When the NeXT Mac OS ships it will support virtualization that will allow the thin-client Macs to run without interrupting the INTELigent Mac-minis streaming music to the Mac Stereo and video to an HDTV.

And at some point Mac OSs will become self optimizing using the virtualization scheme I described perhaps in conjunction with the code-morphing software that Apple has already said it will use to create INTELigent Mac code.

I would not be surprised if Apple did not announce its special use of virtualization initially since it is the sort of thing you would keep a trade secret for a while until your lead over your rivals gets LARGE !!! 😱 😱 😱
 
Raven VII said:
Why would you need to run both?
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In addition to doing my creative Mac stuff 😎 (Photoshop, Logic Pro), I'm a certified real estate appraiser, and appraisal software is unfortunately only available for Windows.
 
php said:
In addition to doing my creative Mac stuff 😎 (Photoshop, Logic Pro), I'm a certified real estate appraiser, and appraisal software is unfortunately only available for Windows.
Click to expand...

http://www.realestateoffergenerator.com/pagefour.html
"The Real Estate Offer Generator is being offered at a price of only $19.95. Most other full featured Real Estate Investment software packages cost over $100.00.

You may purchase the Real Estate Offer Generator with confidence. If for any reason you are not satisfied with the product within 7 days of purchase, you are entitled to an unconditional money back guarantee.


Please specify the operating system you are running (Windows, Linux, Unix, or any other that supports Java.) As soon as payment is received, the Real Estate Offer Generator will be sent to you via Email using the Email address provided to PayPal.


Thank you very much for your purchase!


Real Estate Offer Generator $19.95"


http://www.powermatecorp.com/html/agent_business_builder.html

"Powerful Full 32-Bit Technology Leadership: Agent Business Builder™ is the only complete contact relationship management, CRM, and full-featured sales and marketing system for REALTORS® that runs the same on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 & XP, and Macintosh and Macintosh with System X. The full 32-bit operation speeds data through your computer up to 400% faster than older products. Most important, even a beginner can be productive the first day, with no training required!"



"... software is unfortunately only available for Windows."

Whenever anyone has made this statement I have always found it to be UNTRUE !!! 😉
 
Premium Computers

You probably have seen the statement that quotes some higher level Apple executive as saying the Apple will do nothing to prevent Windows from being installed on a MacTel box.

If you were selling Mac's for a living and had a MacTel box to sell what could you say during a sales presentation? Could you say that all the custom software that they currently have that runs only on Windows is still available to them with a MacTel box and if that software is not interactive with the Internet it will be in an isolated and much safer environment than running on a solely WinTel box?

Would the new MacTel system be the most cross platform system available on the market? Runs OSX, Windows, Linux. One box with all the features needed for any of major desktop operating system. Considering the closed market approach Apple has taken in the past, since the return of Sir Steve. Considering what is happening today with the iPod in regards to opening the market via licensing. Considering the non response to Michael Dell's request to sell the OSX operating system on his boxes. If it turns out that this cross platform box is the iPod of desktop computing would you expect Apple to open the market via cross licensing?

Right now Windows and Linux are on the same hardware. Right now in the desktop world Linux is third in market penetration with Apple having less than 5% of the market. Windows is first in market penetration and first in virus susceptibility. The computer market has been in a slump for sometime now. Dell, Microsoft and Gateway are flat lined or worse. The economic factors in the nation are ramping up again, existing computers are getting long of tooth and the cost of viruses are in the news everyday.

When Apple brings out a system that remedies these problems and has legacy capabilities too do you think it will sell? Which portion of the personal computer market is growing the fastest? What system do you think Apple will bring out as MacTel first? Is it portable?

That's my thinking and I am sticking to it!

Jim
 
prewwii said:
You probably have seen the statement that quotes some higher level Apple executive as saying the Apple will do nothing to prevent Windows from being installed on a MacTel box.

If you were selling Mac's for a living and had a MacTel box to sell what could you say during a sales presentation? Could you say that all the custom software that they currently have that runs only on Windows is still available to them with a MacTel box and if that software is not interactive with the Internet it will be in an isolated and much safer environment than running on a solely WinTel box?

Would the new MacTel system be the most cross platform system available on the market? Runs OSX, Windows, Linux. One box with all the features needed for any of major desktop operating system. Considering the closed market approach Apple has taken in the past, since the return of Sir Steve. Considering what is happening today with the iPod in regards to opening the market via licensing. Considering the non response to Michael Dell's request to sell the OSX operating system on his boxes. If it turns out that this cross platform box is the iPod of desktop computing would you expect Apple to open the market via cross licensing?

Right now Windows and Linux are on the same hardware. Right now in the desktop world Linux is third in market penetration with Apple having less than 5% of the market. Windows is first in market penetration and first in virus susceptibility. The computer market has been in a slump for sometime now. Dell, Microsoft and Gateway are flat lined or worse. The economic factors in the nation are ramping up again, existing computers are getting long of tooth and the cost of viruses are in the news everyday.

When Apple brings out a system that remedies these problems and has legacy capabilities too do you think it will sell? Which portion of the personal computer market is growing the fastest? What system do you think Apple will bring out as MacTel first? Is it portable?

That's my thinking and I am sticking to it!

Jim
Click to expand...

HUH? 😕
 
yac_moda said:
http://www.realestateoffergenerator.com/pagefour.html
"The Real Estate Offer Generator is being offered at a price of only $19.95. Most other full featured Real Estate Investment software packages cost over $100.00.

You may purchase the Real Estate Offer Generator with confidence. If for any reason you are not satisfied with the product within 7 days of purchase, you are entitled to an unconditional money back guarantee.


Please specify the operating system you are running (Windows, Linux, Unix, or any other that supports Java.) As soon as payment is received, the Real Estate Offer Generator will be sent to you via Email using the Email address provided to PayPal.


Thank you very much for your purchase!


Real Estate Offer Generator $19.95"


http://www.powermatecorp.com/html/agent_business_builder.html

"Powerful Full 32-Bit Technology Leadership: Agent Business Builder™ is the only complete contact relationship management, CRM, and full-featured sales and marketing system for REALTORS® that runs the same on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 & XP, and Macintosh and Macintosh with System X. The full 32-bit operation speeds data through your computer up to 400% faster than older products. Most important, even a beginner can be productive the first day, with no training required!"



"... software is unfortunately only available for Windows."

Whenever anyone has made this statement I have always found it to be UNTRUE !!! 😉
Click to expand...

Thanks, but I'm refering to real estate *appraisal* software, which generally costs about $800 in most cases. There was a company that sold a version for Mac OS 9, but they're out of business now. The only available RE appraisal software is for Windows, and that's pretty much from just three companies, Ala Mode, ACI or DayOne. Believe me, I've done much research looking for OS X alternatives with no luck.
 
However it works, I hope that OSX maintains control of all processes.

I somehow have this nightmare of OSX and Windows doing their virtual things. Meanwhile a nasty new malware is off in a third virtual machine, watching my hard drive, eating my bandwidth, doing the tango with my personal files, all the while OSX and Windows are oblivious to it.
 
yac_moda said:
I think Apple might ship something TOTALLY new and revolutionary this time !!!

I think the new Mac-mini is likely to support WiFi for video and stereo sound and instead of Apple shipping new iBooks the INTELigent iBooks and perhaps powerbook rumors are actually confused with thin-client monitors that will receive the WiFi video and be a very thin and light weight remote computing client, touch-screen monitor with a BT keyboard add-on, to the INTELigent Mac-mini which will be upgradable to high-end power.
Click to expand...
I think the concept here is excellent, I wish Apple was doing this - but I don't think they are.

My reasoning, mainly, is that they could have done that without separate virtual machines. And there is both a RAM and CPU overhead to running multiple instances of the OS instead of having 2 separate interface processes running.

To add to your concept though - because I do really like it - how about this
1) first let me repeat your idea - wifi tablets running from a remote Mac
2) a school Mac-mini which runs 4 screens/keyboards/mice simultaneously?
3) network screens (with graphics cards, network cards, keyboard and mouse) that you can plug in anywhere and run from your remote mac?
4) a software app for your old Macs so instead of throwing them out as they're too slow, they can be remote clients to your new Mac. Even the oldest PPC mac could have more life.

Imagine a MacMini with a flat-screen tablet connected to the top... that you can disconnect and walk around with (it switches to wifi). Do you remember when the Mac Mini came out they were talking about this iPod Dock which seemed to be on the top of the Mini but wasn't setup? Perhaps it was a dock for a Tablet that wasn't released.

And Quartz Extreme is supposed to make the communication between the OS and graphics card very minimal... it still hasn't been enabled, but when ready this is the ideal technology for remote systems - since those remote systems would simply be "graphics cards", while the OS did its thing.

Just thinking 🙂
 
windows+yonah

if we can get OSXs security running underneath windows to protect it from all the crap out there, then i will be happy, windows is somewhat bearable when u dont have to deal with crap ALL THE TIME.
 
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.
Click to expand...

But there's still contention for bus, RAM, hard drive, etc.

Running a second OS (or a second copy of OS X) would be a worse performance hit than running a single OS, because the second OS is a hell of a lot of overhead.

Virtualization or no, the CPU(s) and other resources are going to be shared among all the processes and threads that are running on the computer. The fewer processes and threads that are running, the better for the performance of any given application on the machine.

There certainly is context switching - every time an OS gives some time to a different running process. Virtualization doesn't prevent that.

The way to get optimal performance on a media center Mac is to minimize the number of processes that are running, and raising the priority of the processes that are displaying video or playing sound. You'd probably want a core dedicated to video, and a core dedicated to sound and miscellaneous housekeeping processes of the OS.

And you *certainly* don't want a second operating system eating up RAM that could be used for buffering video and audio.

Virtualization or no, you only have a limited amount of computer resources which are shared among the processes running. The fewer processes you have running, the better those processes will run.

If you want performance in a media center, virtualization is definitely not the answer.
 
Randall said:
This is a nice thought if you don't actually have to use Windows, such is the case for some. But there are those of us that utilize applications that are only available on Windows for our work or everyday lives, and therefor we can't simply just "switch" that easily. And Virtual PC is currently 100% a software emulator, which makes it slow and not very practicle for everyday use. Think of it as Reverse Rosetta but for the whole damn OS. And that's just ridiculous.
Click to expand...

For example, my employer has a custom Windows app which employees must use for time & expense reporting. And there are company utilities, Computer-Based Training courses, and other things that are Windows-only.

I'm looking forward to buying a dual-core Intel Mac laptop, and it'll really become useful once a VMWare or VirtualPC comes out.
 
GregA said:
I think the concept here is excellent, I wish Apple was doing this - but I don't think they are.

My reasoning, mainly, is that they could have done that without separate virtual machines. And there is both a RAM and CPU overhead to running multiple instances of the OS instead of having 2 separate interface processes running.

To add to your concept though - because I do really like it - how about this
1) first let me repeat your idea - wifi tablets running from a remote Mac
2) a school Mac-mini which runs 4 screens/keyboards/mice simultaneously?
3) network screens (with graphics cards, network cards, keyboard and mouse) that you can plug in anywhere and run from your remote mac?
4) a software app for your old Macs so instead of throwing them out as they're too slow, they can be remote clients to your new Mac. Even the oldest PPC mac could have more life.

Imagine a MacMini with a flat-screen tablet connected to the top... that you can disconnect and walk around with (it switches to wifi). Do you remember when the Mac Mini came out they were talking about this iPod Dock which seemed to be on the top of the Mini but wasn't setup? Perhaps it was a dock for a Tablet that wasn't released.

And Quartz Extreme is supposed to make the communication between the OS and graphics card very minimal... it still hasn't been enabled, but when ready this is the ideal technology for remote systems - since those remote systems would simply be "graphics cards", while the OS did its thing.

Just thinking 🙂
Click to expand...


You got it figured out Buddy !!!

Virtual Machines just makes it clean and straight forward, especially if you launch one OS with each process.

"To add to your concept though - because I do really like it - how about this
1) first let me repeat your idea - wifi tablets running from a remote Mac
2) a school Mac-mini which runs 4 screens/keyboards/mice simultaneously?"

Ya, BT and WiFi connections for all of it, they are making batteries now that hold there charge for 12-20 years so no need to recharge !!!

"3) network screens (with graphics cards, network cards, keyboard and mouse) that you can plug in anywhere and run from your remote mac?"

I want to put a machine in my truck, put an antenna on the roof and then be able to go sit in the park and use my tablet MACchine with really long battery life because the remote Mac runs the Finder and background apps with its processor and the front most app runs from the processor in the tablet.

"4) a software app for your old Macs so instead of throwing them out as they're too slow, they can be remote clients to your new Mac. Even the oldest PPC mac could have more life."

Distributed computing WiFi style !!!

😛 😉 😀
 
php said:
Thanks, but I'm refering to real estate *appraisal* software, which generally costs about $800 in most cases. There was a company that sold a version for Mac OS 9, but they're out of business now. The only available RE appraisal software is for Windows, and that's pretty much from just three companies, Ala Mode, ACI or DayOne. Believe me, I've done much research looking for OS X alternatives with no luck.
Click to expand...

You just answered your own question, the reason why they are out of business now is because... they catered for Mac users 😱
 
Virtualization of Graphics

The hypervisor would basically have to have drivers for all of the hardware allowing it to virtualize it all, which would work well for everything but video cards.

You will want opengl/directx acceleration for all of your OSes, so the way I see this working is having OSX be the "main" os with something like VirtualPC running which can map directx and opengl calls on windows to the opengl calls on OSX.

I just don't see a small bios/firmware level hypervisor being able to handle that.

So, these instructions amount to accelerating OS virtualization (basically, making VMware and VirtualPC work better), but that's about it as far as I can tell.

If you want to run 10 Linux partitions at once (without X running), yeah, go with the hypervisor.
 
If a potential switcher see this feature, especially if it involves not fiddling around with partitioning they would be more likely to buy. I know I would. I would like to see an option to install other x86 os' inside the os installer, how cool would it be to see another os in the custom install menu? OS X software supports apple hardware, apple don't care which OS you use as long as it sells macs.

Anyone think an expose for operating systems is possible?
 
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