Re: Running KVM on a Laptop

Andre Przywara
2009-02-16T14:07:52Z

Ross McKay wrote:
> dnjap wrote:
>
>> I'm looking for a laptop on which I can run KVM.
>>
>> 1. Does anyone have a list of AMD-V or VT-x capable laptop CPU's?
>
> Is it not as simple as checking for the svm or vt flags?
>
> egrep '(vt|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo
>
> Take a bootable LiveCD into your local computer shop and check.
Yes, this would be the ultimate test.
AMD Turion X2 and Turion X2 Ultra are based on K8 and thus support SVM.
Some vendors decided to disable SVM in the BIOS. On some of those
machines it _cannot_ be enabled (both in the BIOS setup and later from
the OS side). So although this machines are Turion X2 based you cannot
use KVM here, but /proc/cpuinfo shouldn't show this flag in this case.
Please note that AMD-CPUs labeled "Sempron" do not support SVM at all.

>> 2. It seems Turion 64 X2 and some of Core 2 Duo processors can run KVM.
>> Does anyone know which of these CPU's implement Nested Page Tables or
>> Extended Page Tables? (Xen's compatibility list doesn't provide such
>> details: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/HVM_Compatible_Processors)
Currently there are no Nested Page Tables capable notebook processors
from AMD, but the Turion X2 Ultra successor will be PhenomII based and
thus support NPT. Look at the AMD roadmaps for a processor called Caspian.
NPT is a CPUID bit in the SVM feature CPUID leaf (8000_000A, EDX:0).
Recent versions of x86info can also decode this bit (x86info -v, line
starting with SVM: and containing "np").
There are no known BIOS restrictions regarding to NPT nor the BIOS needs
to handle NPT in a special way.

>>
>> 3. If you're running KVM on your laptop, could you share the
>> information? Does your laptop's BIOS support AMD-V or VT-x?
We use hardware virtualization on a MSI MegaBook S271 (TurionX2).

Regards,
Andre.

--
Andre Przywara
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