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x86 virtualization is the use of hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities on an x86/x86-64 CPU.. In the late 1990s x86 virtualization was achieved by complex software techniques, necessary to compensate for the processor's lack of hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities while attaining reasonable performance.
Instruction set extensions that have been added to the x86 instruction set in order to support hardware virtualization.These extensions provide instructions for entering and leaving a virtualized execution context and for loading virtual-machine control structures (VMCSs), which hold the state of the guest and host, along with fields which control processor behavior within the virtual machine.
Prior to 2005, x86 architecture processors were unable to meet the Popek and Goldberg requirements – a specification for virtualization created in 1974 by Gerald J. Popek and Robert P. Goldberg. However, both proprietary and open-source x86 virtualization hypervisor products were developed using software-based virtualization.
The x86 instruction set refers to the set of instructions that x86-compatible microprocessors support. The instructions are usually part of an executable program, often stored as a computer file and executed on the processor. The x86 instruction set has been extended several times, introducing wider registers and datatypes as well as new ...
Therefore, to compensate for these architectural limitations, designers accomplished virtualization of the x86 architecture through two methods: full virtualization or paravirtualization. [4] Both create the illusion of physical hardware to achieve the goal of operating system independence from the hardware but present some trade-offs in ...
x86, x86-64 (with Intel VT-x or AMD-V, and VirtualBox 2 or later) Windows, Linux, macOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, eComStation DOS, Linux, macOS, [ 8 ] FreeBSD, Haiku , OS/2, Solaris, Syllable, Windows, and OpenBSD (with Intel VT-x or AMD-V, due to otherwise tolerated incompatibilities in the emulated memory management).
February 8: VMware introduces the first x86 virtualization product for the Intel IA-32 architecture, known as VMware Virtual Platform, based on earlier research by its founders at Stanford University. VMware Virtual Platform is based on software emulation with a guest/host OS design that required all guest environments be stored as files under ...
Nested virtualization becomes more necessary as widespread operating systems gain built-in hypervisor functionality, which in a virtualized environment can be used only if the surrounding hypervisor supports nested virtualization; for example, Windows 7 is capable of running Windows XP applications inside a built-in virtual machine.