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Sandy Bridge E VT-d broken in launch C1 stepping but will remedied in C2 stepping

I had to visit another forum to find out what vt-d did,

VT-d enables DMA on a Virtual Machine. It has nothing to do with CPU and Memory virtualization, but with devices virtualization.
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Besty said:
Some Enterprise-Level virtualisation hypervisors (VMWare vSphere) will not install without hardware acceleration enabled.

Even non-bare metal hypervisors (Parallels, VMWare Fusion, Workstation) will suffer a real performance penalty, if they install at all.

Details are a bit sketchy in the article, I would be surprised if Intel launched a chip with errata that could not be microcode patched after release.
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You don't need to address Subliminal Aura with generalities like "hardware acceleration", (s)he's probably the most knowledgeable user on the boards today when it comes to this topic ;)

I'm not an expert, and perhaps Subliminal Aura will correct me, but vt-d is intel's version of a technology which provides a DMA interface for a virtual machine to access peripherals. For example, a graphics card used in a virtual machine will be able to access the system memory directly using its native drivers.

It is distinct from vt-x, which itself isn't even necessary for a virtual machine to run. I can use vmware on my e7200 fine (binary translation?).

As said before, the lack of vt-d doesn't stop you running a virtual machine, and will affect a tiny minority of users (if any at all!).

(Edit, damn post took 20 mins to write)
 
The article is correct in its wording.

Regardless, I would not buy a new chip without it (VT-D) or recommend it to clients, it is a critical acceleration feature for enterprise users and has been for quite a while now.

You might be able to hack around it in a home-use setting but, not for serious professional use.

I do not have my reference material in front of me but, I believe VT-D gives the hooks necessary into the PCI layers to allow GPU virtualisation and abstraction of other PCI add-in boards into, the VM.

The kind of usage cases affected could be things such as full Windows 7 emulation, with GUI accelerated GPU for Developer workstations and full scale VDI.

I would have a look now but dinner is burning.
 
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joeyjojo said:
You don't need to address Subliminal Aura with generalities like "hardware acceleration", (s)he's probably the most knowledgeable user on the boards today when it comes to this topic
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Christ ! I wouldn't go that far mate but thanks for the compliment - you almost gave me a hot flush :D

I'm just an average joe bloggs with the usual set of flaws - it's just that I've been looking at vt-d for a good couple of years but am far from an expert :p I see this type of acceleration as being the future - how many times have you wanted to alt-tab switch from windows to linux or windows to osx - how may times have you wanted to run osx and windows at the same time with both OSs having full acceleration ?

It's a real pity that this is being neglected hence my interest
 
Just trying to help out, no offence intended.

If this is true, the read across could be more detrimental to apple and it's upcoming mac pro refresh as they will need the server based sandy bridge chips. Server manufacturers and home users can work around or sit tight while the new stepping is sorted out.

If, these are the chips affected and this article runs true then, there might be some frayed nerves in apple product management right now.

It is a shame as I had one eye on an EVGA SR-3 board and two new SB-E chips ;)
 
up until I read the article on the defective C1 of SandyBridge-E I thought yea - not a chance I'm going for AMD. Frankly really ****ed right now with Intel because this is the second time Intel have their heads in their ar**- I hope nothing is broken in bulldozer because It's looking like I will be an early adopter. My box is so old :( - will go insane otherwise.

I can't fathom the discussion on how it will effect a select few enthusiasts. I mean it has an "E" extension for the enthusiasts, WTF is up with that, release a chip with brokered VT for the enthusiast market... what a joke.

Why buy defective? I hope they take a hard knock on this
 
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inSilica said:
I can't fathom the discussion on how it will effect a select few enthusiasts. I mean it has an "E" extension for the enthusiasts, WTF is up with that, release a chip with brokered VT for the enthusiast market... what a joke.
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Read Besty's post above. If you don't understand it, then you don't need to worry :rolleyes:

Also, I will echo Besty and say this isn't an "enthusiast" feature at all but an "enterprise" one. Do you feel better now?
 
inSilica said:
... a little :D.

Bothered finding a post to avoid duplicating however didn't bother to read the entire post.

slap!
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slap.gif


:D
 
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