As this courses covers both the practice and theory of systems programming, one

Question

As this courses covers both the practice and theory of systems programming, one issue that a systems programmer must consider is the actual platform (hardware) upon which the system is running. A major vendor at this time is Intel. Recent Intel server microprocessors have a series of features that Intel terms: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions), AVX2, FMA3, F16C, BMI (Bit Manipulation Instructions 1)+BMI2, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST), Intel 64, XD bit (an NX bit implementation), TXT, Intel vPro, Intel VT-x, Intel VT-d, Hyper-threading (except E3-1220 v3 and E3-1225 v3), Turbo Boost 2.0, AES-NI, Smart Cache, and TSX. (Numerous references for this list; one such is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_ microarchitecture#Server_processors ) Which of these are most important for improving the performance of virtual machines and why? (Note that AMD and other vendors may have similar features under different nomenclatures.)

Explanation / Answer

Below technologies(with reasons beside) are important for improving the performance of virtual machines:-

1) Turbo Boost - It helps to enable the processor to run above its base operating frequency using dynamic control of the clock ate of the CPU. It is activated when the operating system requests its highest performance state for the processor.

2) SSE4.2 - It offers the largest change to the instruction set of x86 processors which allows the Penryn clock to run at higher frequencies comared to its Core 2 parents within the original cool thermal envelope. It benefits the applications that use SSE4 to have speed improvements in the order of 40 percent.

3) Intel 64 - helps to utilize memory larger than 4GB which in turns improves system performance

4) Intel VT-x - It is a set of enhancement to improve the virtualization performance which should allow to have near native speed within a virtual machine.

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