Which chipsets support VT-d?

[cholsen]

Hi!

I would like to set up a Linux machine, being able to run Windows via Xen in parallel to play some games. According to http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenFaq 7.3 the usage of 3D graphics in DomU is not possible. But point 3 of section 7.3 says that IOMMU would enable this feature. Since VT-d is Intel's equivalent to IOMMU, I would like to buy a mainboard supporting this technology.

Now it is hard to point out which chipsets support VT-d. The appropriate VT-d doc of Xen ( http://lxr.xensource.com/lxr/source/docs/misc/vtd.txt ) only references some sample mainboards and machines, these only seem to be such with Q35 chipset / vPro.
A vmware presentation ( http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/702997-1574/NE-VMUG%20-%20Intel%20Pres%20-%20071907%20-%20p%20King%20-%20revised.pdf Slide 15) says, that Seaburg and Bearlake chipsets would support VT-d - but Bearlake would not only include Q35, but also P35, X38, ...

So please could someone lighten up this a bit?

[David_O_Intel1]

VT is Intel Virtualization Technology, an umbrella term that includes many different features. VT-d stands for Intel Virtualization for Directed I/O, a specific feature under VT. Included in VT-don Intel Corei7are the capabilities: (a) I/O device assignment, (b) DMA remapping, (c) interrupt remapping, and (d) reliability features.

You can read about VT-d in detail at:

http://www.intel.com/technology/virtualization/technology.htm?iid=tech_vt+tech

Click on the link entitled "Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) for Directed I/O (Intel VT-d) Architecture Specification".

Yes, it is entirely possible to run a hypervisor without VT-d support. You merely miss the performance advantages associated with the feature.

David Ott

[z160896]

Does Intel 3210 Chipset support vt-d? We have a virtualization system (KVM) with this chipset, cpu-core 2 duo E8400, BIOS - AMI with vt-d enabled. The guest OS is w2003 server, host is Linux based on 2.6.32 kernel. Two eth nic ports are configured as PCI-passthrough devices for the guest OS. Software RAID virtual devices (VD) (from host) is presented to the guest as virtio. When I do IO test on the VD from the guest OS, after a while, I will see warning messages:

Sep 9 20:32:23 (none) kernel: [83889.934743] DRHD: handling fault status reg 2
Sep 9 20:32:23 (none) kernel: [83889.934747] DMAR:[DMA Write] Request device
[01:00.0] fault addr 0
Sep 9 20:32:23 (none) kernel: [83889.934748] DMAR:[fault reason 05] PTE Write
access is not set

What could be the cause for this?

[nweissma]

Quoting David Ott (Intel)

"BIOS support is required and I am told some commercial distributions have it fused off."

for what reasons would an OEM permanently disable virtualization; what benefits are to be gained; if an end-user bought the computer for the express purpose of virtualization then why would the oem deliberately -- and permanently -- frustrate -- effectively defraud -- the enduser?

[amanda829]

Hi,

I m in search for the motherboard which supports Q45 Chipset also supports 16Gig DDR2 memory.. I found out this on the web .. I am getting back into Intel technologies .. I don't have any clue how good this motherboard is .. The company called IBase MB945 with Q45 Intel chipset .. I am tryiing to find the Motherbpard manual to confirm myself it does support Vt-d technologies ..

If anybody bought this borad and using .. please through some light on this ..

Thanks in advance.. !!