Intel Accelerating Virtualisation Effort
Intel Corporation is accelerating its broad industry efforts to deliver enhanced virtualisation capabilities - codenamed
Vanderpool - for Intel®-based clients and servers. The company has released its preliminary Vanderpool Technology
External Architecture Specifications (EAS) to facilitate industry design collaboration and advance the pace and breadth
of advancements in virtualisation.
Virtualisation allows a platform to run multiple operating systems and applications in independent partitions or
‘containers.’ One physical compute system can function as multiple ‘virtual’ systems. Vanderpool Technology can help
improve future virtualisation solutions.
Intel’s virtualisation technology is part of a collection of premier Intel silicon technologies that are expected to
enable new computing benefits for home and business users, and IT managers. Other technologies available today in
various platforms and market segments include Intel Hyper-Threading Technology and Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology.
Intel also has plans underway for Intel Active Management technology and LaGrande technology that focus on system
management and safer computing respectively.
The Vanderpool Technology specifications, found at www.intel.com/technology/vt, provide technology overviews and
guidance to software developers who are designing virtualisation solutions for both IA-32 and Intel Itanium®-based
processor platforms.
While expected in Itanium-based platforms this year, Intel now also plans to offer Vanderpool Technology in future
desktop processor and chipset products in 2005, a year earlier than previously planned.
Intel has been working with several of the industry’s leading software vendors to solicit input on the technology, and
also to jointly speed the delivery of virtualisation to the marketplace. The EAS and Intel’s efforts to work with the
software community to develop enhanced virtualisation solutions - including current ongoing efforts to develop the first
Vanderpool Technology-enabled virtual machine monitor applications - are currently expected to result in initial systems
incorporating Vanderpool Technology later this year and broader growth through 2006.
“There is little doubt across the industry that the potential benefits and applications of virtualisation for businesses
and consumers are significant,” said William A. Swope, Intel corporate vice president and co-general manager of the
Software and Solutions Group. “Our work with the software community around Vanderpool is an important step in helping to
drive improvements to the reliability and resilience of enterprise servers, potentially reducing total cost of ownership
and enabling exciting future uses for the digital home.”
Using Vanderpool Technology in the digital office and enterprise, businesses may be able to isolate a portion of a
managed PC to perform system upgrades and maintenance without interrupting the end-user. IT managers could create one
desktop PC software ‘build’ that could function independently as both a business and personal system, helping to keep
software loads separate. They could also create systems that run different operating systems and software for different
tasks or legacy applications. Additionally, Vanderpool Technology-enhanced virtualisation can potentially provide IT
advantages through server consolidation, legacy migration and security benefits.
In the future, home users may be able to create virtual ‘partitions’ isolating multiple user environments such as
dedicating resources to a PC game, productivity and personal video recorder-type environments.
Additionally, as Intel transitions to multi-core platforms, software designers and system-makers could use Vanderpool
technology-based partitions and extra processing cores to create unique combinations within a server and/or PC for
specialised use.
More details of solutions based on Intel’s Vanderpool Technology solutions will be disclosed at Intel Developer Forum,
March 1-3 in San Francisco.