Parallel’s VM with Intel VT is the fastest VM I’ve ever used

Posted on April 6, 2006 by Josh Bancroft

Windows XP setup just finished inside a Parallels virtual machine (the one that uses Intel Virtualization Technology), and it’s fast. The fastest VM I’ve ever used. :-)

I created a VM to give XP 512 MB of RAM (2GB total on my Mac mini). It’s reporting one “T2300″ processor (how the Core Duo shows up in Windows) at 1.66 GHz, currently throttled down to 722MHz (the processor can scale up or down depending on load). So it seems that one of the two cores is dedicated to running XP in the virtual machine. Sweet. :-) I’ve got a screenshot I’ll post soon.

I’m doing more testing and fiddling around, but first impression is that Parallels‘ solution is very usable. At $49 it’s affordable, too.

Plus it makes me happy to see a cool Intel technology finally get a cool real world use. I’m proud to work for Intel today. :-)

About Josh Bancroft

Geek. Serial Experimentalist. Selfish, Obsessive, and Easily Distracted. I'm jabancroft most places. TinyScreenfuls.com is my home online.
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  • http://pigpog.com/node/1806 PigPog | Creativity Anywhere

    to run on just one of those two cores, and let Windows XP run on the other one. Each machine thinks it has exclusive use of a processor. I’ll hand over to Josh to explain it better, and show you the result… Announcement and explanation.Josh’s first thoughts after trying it. Screenshot of Windows XP’s System Properties, in a window, on a Mac. They’re saying that this software will cost $49 when it’s ready – I can see a lot of people wanting it for that. If all this works out, though, the barriers to buying a Mac

  • Glenn Millam

    Now I think you can begin to understand why Intel made such a big deal about the Apple design win. I don’t see Parallel’s product getting widespread use in the Windows world, but I see it getting massive use in the Mac one. Apple seems to promote the new and cool faster than the more conservative Windows universe, particularly technologies developed and promoted by Intel. The early adoption of USB in the original iMac, and the use of EFI in the latest Macs are examples.

    When Intel would come out with something cool, it has always had to go to Microsoft and the PC manufacturers and ask them to change their ways, often with lukewarm or no support. Now, with Apple, Intel can quickly showcase new technologies in real-world products, and prod the rest of the computing world to improve itself.

  • http://www.astrogoth.com Art Taylor

    Holy diamonds, it’s amazing. I timed installing setting up and installing Windows XP on my duo mini, and it was amazing. I also did a quick DSLReports.com benchmark to see if it was dog slow on networking, but it surprised me there, too.

    As you noticed, the only “disappointment” (other than not being able to buy it) so far is the single-processor presentation in XP. I don’t know if that’s one of the things that will change once it’s out of Beta, but then again, it keeps the system usable. No matter how bad XP gets, at least one core will be able to manage the mouse, keyboard, and command-Q!

  • http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2006Apr/bma20060407035728.htm Geek.com Geek News – New Intel-optimized Mac virtualization offers another option

    [...] seemed to take a serious performance hit and just weren’t quite there.Josh reported on the new Parallels Workstation virtual machine, which uses Intel Virtualization Technology, and it seems the experience is much better.I will now [...]