On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:21:42 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> I still find it surprising that VMware manages to run software at
>>> nearly native speed. Other emulators I've seen are way, way slower...
>>
>> VMware doesn't emulate, that's a big difference.  The code runs
>> natively in many/most cases.
>
> ...until it performs any kind of kernel-mode operation, presumably.
> (Which would be ALL THE TIME, more or less.)

Ring 0 has to be emulated, yes, but with various hypervisors implemented 
in hardware now, that "emulation" is done by hardware.
 
>>> It still amuses me that I can run Linux under QEMU, and it's *still*
>>> fast enough to run DOOM with software rendering. ;-)
>>
>> Computers are pretty speedy these days.
> 
> That's my point, yes. ;-)
> 
> The old POV-Ray benchmark (skyvase.pov) used to take /hours/ to run,
> unless you had a cluster. Today it can be run in a few split seconds.
> It's so fast it's useless as a benchmark. Now that's progress...

Indeed it is.

Jim

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