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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 07:05 AM EDT |
You are misusing the word 'virtual'.
Its a physical chip, and it physically executes x86 instructions. Its a
physical machine, not a virtual machine. It may break them into micro-
ops, reorder the ops and renumber the registers but that doesn't change
the fact that it physically (in hardware) executes x86 instructions. CPUs
with a trace cache (P4, Transmeta) still physically execute instructions.
A virtual machine is a machine where some of its "execution resources"
are made entirely of software. OS assistance (e.g. traps to handle
complex functions like page table lookups or fp emulation) doesn't count
either.
If a program thinks it has exclusive access to the hardware of a physical
machine, but actually it doesn't (because that machine is being
"virtualized") then it could be said to be running in a "virtual
machine".
The one virtualized machine, supports the simultaneous or interleaved
execution of multiple virtual machines using the one set of physical
hardware resources.
Hyperthreading also doesn't make it a virtual machine, because it is a
*hardware* multiplexing of CPU execution units--it is entirely physical.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- no - Authored by: Wol on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 12:04 PM EDT
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