In a press release today, Imtel announced a new processor hardware component, called a Memory Management Unit.
"The MMU will supplement our existing VX-t technology in offloading virtualization overhead to the processor itself," said Imtel's Bob Brooke.
While it has been possible for years to give applications the illusion of controlling the computer's entire memory address space, the in-software techniques employed by hypervisors have always meant taking a performance hit, especially when it was necessary to swap memory to disk. The MMU allows applications to send instructions directly to the processor, negating the need for a software-based address translation layer.
But Imtel claims the biggest benefit will be hardware-enforced "memory protection", ensuring that different applications cannot read or modify each others' memory. Brooke went on to claim, "The containerization benefits of the MMU will provide unparalleled levels of security."
VMWear's Chan Du declined to comment specifically when asked if the MMU would be utilized by their upcoming hypervisor technology, the so-called Operating System Kernel. He would only say, "Operization Technology will provide many new ways to abstract hardware from individual applications, but it is our policy to not discuss features of unreleased products."
So about a month after I posted this, Intel did actually announce an IOMMU for virtualization. According to Jon Stokes the technology "is to virtualization what protected memory was to multitasking".
I guess truth sometimes mirrors satire.
