Can I expose VT-x or AMD-V to the VM?

[accessory]

Hi:

I try to do some development on VT-x or AMD-V. I just wonder if it is possible to expose (or virtualize or emulate) the VT-X OR AMD-V to the guest OS, so that I can develop it in a VM. I think if I can do it, the development envrionment will be more convient : I don't need a serial cable and two computers.

I tried the settings in VM 6.5.1 for processor. But even if I select VT-X or AMD-V in the settins, the guest OS cannot see the VMX flag from the CPU.

Has anyone done that before? Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[admin]

I'm pretty sure we don't virtualize VT-x or AMD-V instructions (that would be really hard and really slow). Without being familiar with Workstation, I would assume the settings affect whether VT-x/AMD-V are used by the host, not whether the guest can see them.

[ksc · Accepted solution]

The existing implementation masks out VT/SVM CPUID bits and generates faults for the VT/SVM instructions, so the guest will never see them.

Is it theoretically possible to emulate? Yes. Happens to be very difficult - emulating VT or SVM instruction takes a lot of slow VT or SVM instructions, so any implementation would likely suffer in performance. So while this is indeed on the feature wishlist, you should not have any expectations about when (or if) it would appear.

[accessory]

I see. Thanks ksc and etung.