INTEL VT-x and AMD-V

Both are a processor feature which supports Hardware - assisted virtualization (for x86
architecture) for CPU. It gives substantial speed improvements due to the allowance of multiple OS to
simultaneously share processor resources.

A. Intel VT-x
a. Initial Name = Vanderpool
b. First Processors = Pentium 4 (model 662 and 672)
c. Current Processors = All except some Intel Atom
d. Method = Extended Page Tables (EPT), then updated to VCMS shadowing (virtual
machine control structure) since Haswell.
e. CPU FLAG = vmx

Intel VT-x can be enabled and disabled via BIOS or UEFI setting. It comes disabled by default.

The menu may be under Chipset, Northbridge, Advanced Chipset Control or Advanced CPU
Configuration.
The option name may be Intel Virtualization Technology, Intel VT-x, Virtualization
Extensions, Vanderpool or something similar.

B. AMD-v
a. Initial Name = Pacifica
b. First Processors = Athlon 64, Athlon 64 x2, Athlon FX
c. Current Processors = AM2, Turion 64 X2, Opteron 2nd Generation 3rd Generation and
Phenom I and II.
d. Method = Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) (equals to EPT on Intel)
e. CPU FLAG = svm

AMD-V is always enabled. There is a bug saying it is not available when another hypervisor is
using it.

Special Case:

Hyper-V reserves hardware feature as long as its installed. Uninstall it to use other VM like VirtualBox or
VMware with Intel VT-x or AMD-v.

VMWARE

The operating system that runs inside a virtual machine is called the guest operating system. To run 64-

bit guest operating systems, the host system must have one of the following processors.

- An AMD CPU that has segment-limit support in long mode

- An Intel CPU that has VT-x support

HYPER-V

minimum requirement is a 1.4 GHz 64-bit processor with hardware-assisted virtualization. It

means that microsft Hyper-V requires either Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) or AMD

Virtualization (AMD-V) technology.

VIRTUALBOX

All VirtualBox hosts must have the virtualization extensions from AMD (AMD-V) and Intel (VT-x) enabled.

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26217_01/E26214/html/virtualbox.html

XEN

CPU hardware virtualization extensions (Intel VT, AMD-V) are required for running Xen HVM guests

(=Windows). Xen PCI passhtru to HVM guests requires hardware IOMMU functionality (Intel VT-d, AMD

IOMMU) and support from CPU, BIOS and motherboard chipset.

KVM

Currently, SUSE only supports KVM full virtualization on AMD64/Intel 64 hosts and on z Systems (only as

Technology Preview). On the AMD64/Intel 64 architecture, KVM is designed around hardware

virtualization features included in AMD* (AMD-V) and Intel* (VT-x) CPUs. It supports virtualization

features of chipsets, and PCI devices, such as an I/O Memory Mapping Unit (IOMMU) and Single Root

I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV).

LXC

Doesn't require any Intel VT or AMD-V

every virtual machine that requires Hardware assisted Virtualization will not work under any

circumstances
References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization

http://www.howtogeek.com/213795/how-to-enable-intel-vt-x-in-your-computers-bios-or-uefi-
firmware/

http://lxc.sourceforge.net/man/lxc.html

https://www.suse.com/documentation/sles-12/book_virt/data/sec_kvm_requires_hardware.html

http://pubs.vmware.com/workstatIon-9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.ws.get_started.doc%2FGUID-

3CF87F1D-FD14-4FBA-A00C-F13D65825CA5.html

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj647784.aspx

http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen4.0#Requirements_for_running_Xen_4.0