Re: [Xen-devel] Vertualization of Unmodified Operating Systems

["M.A. Williamson" <maw48@xxxxxxxxx>]

> AMD Pacifica and Intel's VT make possible the virtualization of 
> unmodified operating systems. Is it still necessary to add code 
> to the hypervisor to support specific operating systems, or can 
> Xen, as written, support any arbitrary OS that successfully boots
> on a PC? (I'm thinking of the BSDs here).
Shouldn't be necessary to add special support usually... However, if an OS 
makes use of particularly esoteric hardware features that other OSes do not 
use then it's possible those will not be emulated in Xen yet. In these 
cases, one would add the emulation to Xen and then that OS (and any others 
which used those features) would be able to run unmodified.
x86 is full of little "tricks", of the "whoa, people (can) do that?" 
variety ;-)
Cheers,
Mark

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel