IOMMU virtualization

[zir_blazer]

Theoretically what you want is possible. But you will need 1 Graphics Card per VM. As you can only assign a hardware passthrough device to 1 VM and this also makes it in-accesible to the ESXi host.[/url]

As far that I know, Xen also supported VGA passthorough from around 3 or 4 years ago, however, you didn't need neither AMD-Vi or Intel VT-d for doing that. The point is what you COULD do with either of those after you virtualize the Video Card. I don't know about the proper limitations of either method. I suppose that if you virtualize it instead of doing passthorough, you can let several VMs use the same GPU like you do with the CPUs, but I would need to confirm. This isn't exactly a well documented topic so is hard to come by with exact facts about what you can, or can't.

Edit:
As for the K processors not supporting this. I am guessing they don't want people to run OC on hypervisors as it will probably introduce a whole world of trouble.
So probably just a support kind of thing.

The Core i7 3930K does have both features (A Sandy Bridge-E, the lone exception of the K series), so there shouldn't be issues about overclocking and virtualizing (What is the worst that could happen? Resets? BSODs? Data loss? Any overclocker that runs stuff out-of-spec should be ready to face that. In a virtualized enviroment the risk could be much higher, but its still your responsability if it happens if your overclock isn't rock solid). Indeed, it also forces you to buy a more expensive LGA 2011 Motherboard, and twice the price tag on the Processor itself. It all points to be a market segmentation tactic more that any type of technical limitation.


I still didn't come by regarding info about how Socket FM1/FM2 supports AMD-Vi. As chances are that if I buy a new cheap machine, I would go for a Trinity (Or wait for Richland), how AMD-Vi support works on that platform is something purchase-defining.