Xen users - Dec 2006 - will this CPU/Board combo work for xen HVM ?

Hi, 

i am planning to by a new PC especially to run xen and windows in full hvm/svm 
mode.

Anyone willing to comment if this combo will work sucessfully:

MSI K9N Ultra-2F, Sockel AM2 NVIDIA Nforce570, ATX, PCIe  

or 

MSI K9N Platinum, Sockel AM2 NVIDIA Nforce570, ATX, PCIe 

and 
 
AMD Athlon64 3000+ AM2 "box" 512kB, Sockel AM2 

I also plan to give the hvm domu access to pci device,
heard the rumor that this will not work at the moment, true ?


thanks
frank


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> -----Original Message-----
> From: xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com 
> [mailto:xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of 
> nig@rhoen.de
> Sent: 01 December 2006 14:22
> To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> Subject: [Xen-users] will this CPU/Board combo work for xen HVM ?
> 
> Hi, 
> 
> i am planning to by a new PC especially to run xen and 
> windows in full hvm/svm 
> mode.
> 
> Anyone willing to comment if this combo will work sucessfully:
> 
> MSI K9N Ultra-2F, Sockel AM2 NVIDIA Nforce570, ATX, PCIe  
> 
> or 
> 
> MSI K9N Platinum, Sockel AM2 NVIDIA Nforce570, ATX, PCIe 
Can''t say anything about either motherboard, but in theory, the
motherboard shouldn''t really matter here - all the virtualization for
HVM in the AMD-case is done by the processor and the chipset/BIOS
features don''t matter at all. That''s the theory - practice may
of course
prove otherwise. I can''t say, as I''m using an old internal AMD
motherboard for my platform, because that''s what we had a year or so
before the HVM enabled processors and motherboards where available on
the open market... 
> 
> and 
>  
> AMD Athlon64 3000+ AM2 "box" 512kB, Sockel AM2 
Should be fine. If you really want to run more than one domain (dom0 +
another one), I would recommend that you use a dual-core processor since
that will give one core for the Dom0 and one to run the rest of the
stuff. Particularly HVM requires a decent amount of Dom0 CPU power, so
you''ll be loosing that amount of CPU performance within the DomU (and
whatever losses that the virtualization itself does, which is very much
dependant on what your DomU is actually doing). 
> 
> I also plan to give the hvm domu access to pci device,
> heard the rumor that this will not work at the moment, true ?
That is true for any near forseeable future. I don''t expect any
hardware
available for the next several months that support REAL IOMMU for HVM
domains - IBM''s Calgary hardware may be the first to be supported by
Xen, but that''s not exactly your budget Home-PC... 

--
Mats
> 
> 
> thanks
> frank
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> 
> 
> 


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Any AM2 board should work, there have been a few reports of Asus 
M2NPV-MX boards not working although I haven''t had any issues with
them.

Right now you cannot pass a PCI device to a HVM domU (not unless you can 
rewrite the driver that domU will be using!). This also means you cannot 
pass a USB device (other then mouse/keyboard/tablet) to domU either 
since you would need to pass the usb controller with it.

Good luck.

matt


nig@rhoen.de wrote:
> Hi, 
>
> i am planning to by a new PC especially to run xen and windows in full
hvm/svm
> mode.
>
> Anyone willing to comment if this combo will work sucessfully:
>
> MSI K9N Ultra-2F, Sockel AM2 NVIDIA Nforce570, ATX, PCIe  
>
> or 
>
> MSI K9N Platinum, Sockel AM2 NVIDIA Nforce570, ATX, PCIe 
>
> and 
>  
> AMD Athlon64 3000+ AM2 "box" 512kB, Sockel AM2 
>
> I also plan to give the hvm domu access to pci device,
> heard the rumor that this will not work at the moment, true ?
>
>
> thanks
> frank
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
>
>
>   

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