CPU's with hardware virtualization support

[guysml]

I recently heard that some new CPU's have some type of built in virtualization support that would allow VM's to run much, much faster.

Does anyone know what CPU's offer this feature and what kind of performance gain could be expected? I was told that this could allow VM's to run almost as fast as the host OS on that machine. Is this really true?

Thanks to anyone who can contribute useful info,

Guy.

[RDPetruska]

The only thing VMware products currently use hardware virtualization for is the ability to run 64-bit guests on Intel CPUs. See http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/resources/528 for an excellent whitepaper.

[kix1979]

Interestingly, most servers shipped seem to have the 64-bit switch off. I have had to turn it on manually in 95% of the cases.