Posts tagged with IOMMU

The AMD booth has been a busy place during the VMworld Conference. One of the big draws in our booth has been three proof of concept demos that showcase up and coming technology – graphics virtualization, I/O virtualization, and secure boot of a hypervisor. We have just posted images of these demos for folks who could not attend the conference and to showcase AMD’s continued efforts to drive the maturation of virtualization technology. We’ll also be uploading the videos of these demos shortly – so stayed tuned!

Graphics Virtualization

With virtual desktops becoming more commonplace, the need is growing to support richer graphic environments that have not been easily served by traditional server hosted clients methodologies.  This proof of concept demo shows how direct device assignment for a graphics card could help support demanding graphics applications like computer aided design (CAD) and digital content creation (DCC).  Please note that the upcoming AMD Opteron^TM 6100 Series processors, code-named “Magny-Cours” referenced below, are scheduled to be launched in the first quarter of 2010.

The demo runs on an AMD engineering development system featuring two twelve-core AMD Opteron^TM 6100 Series  processors (code-named “Magny-Cours”), an upcoming AMD SR5690 chipset and an ATI FirePro^TM professional graphics card. This system is executing 3DMark®06 or “Toy Store”/”Code Zero”  from within a virtual machine running on VMware ESX 4.0. The demo compares graphics performance with and without direct device mapping and utilizes AMD I/O virtualization technology for the graphics passthru. Support for AMD I/O virtualization technology is offered experimentally with VMware ESX 4.0. 

I/O Virtualization

Certain applications requiring high network throughput have not been considered as candidates for virtualization due to the overhead associated with virtualization. I/O virtualization is designed to help reduce this overhead with a goal of achieving near native network performance.  This proof of concept demo compares relative network performance with and without I/O virtualization.  

The demo runs on an AMD engineering development system featuring 4 twelve-core AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors (codenamed “Magny-Cours”), four AMD SR5690 chipsets, and a Solarflare 10Ge network interface card (NIC). The system is executing a network benchmark, NetPerf, on a virtual machine running on VMware ES X 4.0. The demo uses VMware’s passthru support for the direct device assignment of a certified NIC. Support for AMD I/O virtualization technology is offered experimentally with VMware ESX 4.0. 

Secure Boot

Security is important consideration for virtualization, particularly as more business critical applications move to virtualized servers. This proof of concept demo highlights the use of existing hardware capabilities of a production-level AMD technology-based server for secure configuration control of a hypervisor.

The demo runs on an HP ProLiant DL385 G6 server with 2 Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM processors. The DL385 server includes a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) security chip that is built into the motherboard of the system. The demo shows a secure boot of the system with VMware ESX 4.0 using a secure loader written by AMD software engineers. During the boot the configuration of the hypervisor is compared to configuration information stored in the TPM to ensure that there have been no malicious or unintentional modifications to the hypervisor. The status of the hypervisor is reported in the vSphere management console as either being secure or insecure. This allows an operator to avoid using a misconfigured or compromised hypervisor in the datacenter.

Make sure you also check out the AMD Virtual Booth on VMworld.com and the AMD Opteron Friendfeed for more VMworld-related information.

Let me know your views on the evolution of virtualization technology.

Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD.

Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.