Virtualization: Keeping the Processor Occupied
Continued from 'MacBook: Clarifying CPU Confusion'….
Before I get into the specifics, I'll first toss some general VT (virtualization technology) links your way. Volume 10, Issue 3 of the Intel Technology Journal, available from the company's website archive in both HTML and PDF formats, is devoted to virtualization and is a treasure-trove of facts both on the company's current CPU implementations (x86 and Itanium) and its future plans. For virtualization under Windows, I alerted you to VMware's free Player software back in October of 2005. The company followed up by releasing a free version of VMware Server (beta) in early February of 2006, and Microsoft responded by converting Virtual Server to freeware two months later. VMware Server went gold in mid-July, and Microsoft promptly made Virtual PC free, too. Who said you had to wait for your birthday or Christmas to get good presents?
I've been juggling a number of projects, both personal and professional, since the MacBook arrived right after Thanksgiving. So my incremental progress in installing software on the system, both for OS X and Windows, has been slow and scant. However, when Parallels announced its early-December Beta version, I couldn't resist taking the plunge, because I no longer had to install a redundant, virtualized, money- and HDD capacity-consuming Windows image. Instead Parallels Desktop for Mac could tap into the already-existing Boot Camp build. The company also activated a number of other long-awaited features, such as limited USB2 support, the ability to burn CDs and DVDs (optical drive-dependent) from within the VM (virtual machine), and Coherency, a Windows Desktop-concealing trick that creates the illusion you're running Windows apps directly within OS X.
See for yourself. Note that both the Windows Taskbar and OS X Dock are visible. In the foreground you'll see Solitaire, Windows' ultimate 'killer app', next to OS 10.4's Photo Booth (no, I don't look that ugly in real life). And behind them both is OS X's Finder (the Apple equivalent to Windows Explorer). You can even drag Windows application icons into the OS X Dock and launch the programs (and the Windows Virtual Machine that powers them) that way! Note that Apple doesn't allow its O/S to run on non-Apple hardware, so virtualization of OS X under OS X or any other operating system isn't possible (unless you do a little hacking, that is). But Parallels Desktop for Mac (and, for that matter, Parallels Workstation for Linux and Windows) enables virtualization of many other operating systems, such as Windows all the way back to v3.1, and a variety of Linux distros. See here for free O/S images.
Installation was pretty uneventful, although there were a few glitches. I had to re-validate Windows with a new key (after calling Microsoft support) the first time I ran it virtualized, even though it was already activated via Boot Camp. Shared Networking didn't work until I went into Networking System Properties on OS X, enabled the two new network adapters Parallels installed, then rebooted. And after upgrading to Beta 3 a few days ago, the Parallels Tools upgrade wouldn't complete until I used TweakUI to bypass the login screen by configuring an auto-login account. The support forum has been very helpful. One important note: I devoted 1 GByte of the total 2 GBytes of system memory to the VM.
Formal benchmarks, along with more elaborate compatibility testing, will have to wait until I get back from CES and ICCE. For now I'll just say I'm amazed at how fast virtualized Windows feels, specifically when I'm not running a graphics-intensive program. I've seen numerous virtualization demos over the past few years, and have heard countless more presentations on the topic, but you don't really get a sense of how mind-blowing VT is until you test-drive it for yourself. This impressive speed comes courtesy of two key factors:
- The previously mentioned support for Intel's VT hardware, along with the fact that
- Unlike past virtualizers (such as my underwhelming experience with x86-to-PowerPC Virtual PC for Mac), dynamic binary instruction translation doesn't need to occur.
Using Shared Networking, the Parallels VM will tap into an already-active host O/S CAT5 or Wi-Fi connection. If I give the VM its own network connection, it appears as a unique system on the LAN, even to the OS X host it's running under! I can even transfer files back and forth between the VM and host O/S, via the respective Clipboards, by natively dragging-and-dropping , and through network sharing, thereby circumventing OS X's native lack of support for writing to NTFS partitions and Windows' lack of any built-in support for HFS+. On that note, Parallels Tools currently disables Mediafour's MacDrive, a utility which provides a desireable means of accessing the OS X partition when running Windows native. Parallels hopes to fix the bug soon.
Continued with 'VT: Next Steps and Other Options'….
