Re: [Xen-users] Need some clarifications regarding VT-d requirements for PCI passthrough in Xen 4.1

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 02:29:51PM +0200, Sandi Romih wrote:
>    Hello,
>    I am looking into building a workstation using Xen to host several
>    operating systems.
>    Looking at the pci passthrough requirements of Xen4.1 on the [1]VTdHowTo
>    page, I am a little puzzled with the fact that only Intel Core2Duo (with
>    VT-x), Core2Quad, i7 and Core i5 (vPro Brand) CPU's are supported while
>    motherboards with the i55x0 chipset are supported (for example
>    the Supermicro server mainboard: [2]X8DT3-F).
>    The irony in all this it that above this list of supported CPU's and
>    motherboards is the statement "Note that in addition to the motherboard
>    chipset and BIOS also your CPU must have support for IOMMU IO
>    virtualization (VT-d)!".
>    It is ironic because the i55x0 chipset only supports Intel 5500 and 5600
>    Xeon CPU's, which according to Intel, do NOT have VT-d support integrated.
>    To my knowledge, Core i7 CPU's can not be used (in a dual configuration)
>    with i55x0 chipsets. In fact, if one looks at the specs of these 55x0
>    motherboards, one will only find support for 5500 and 5600 CPU's.
>    Is it possible that the i55x0 series of chipsets is listed here because it
>    was used with a single i7 CPU?
>    I currently have the EVGA SR-2 motherboard (which is a dual Xeon 5500/5600
>    board with the i5520 chipset) on which I would like to build this multi OS
>    workstation.
>    So I would be very grateful if someone could confirm whether Xeon 5600
>    CPU's and 5520 chipsets will work with pci passthrough in Xen4.1.
>    Regards
> 

afaik VT-d IOMMU is more of a chipset feature than CPU feature.. 
also VTdHowTo might be out-of-date. Feel free to update.

Anyway, I have some servers with VT-d IOMMU available with Xeon 5600 series 
CPUs.

-- Pasi


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