Great find. Reading between the lines one could imagine that this technology could be used to consolidate workloads from, potentially, any existing instruction set. This could increase the rate of non-host server consolidation significantly. Sam
On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Mark Post <mp...@novell.com> wrote: > >>> On 8/4/2009 at 12:47 AM, "Chase, John" <jch...@ussco.com> wrote: > -snip- > > *VERY* interesting. > > It almost reads like a US Patent document of some kind. Trying to verify > that, I came across something even more interesting: > > http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=7&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=zIIP.BIS.&OS=spec/zIIP&RS=SPEC/zIIP > > United States Patent Application 20080059769 > > MULTIPLE-CORE PROCESSOR SUPPORTING MULTIPLE INSTRUCTION SET ARCHITECTURES > > A multiple-core processor supporting multiple instruction set architectures > provides a power-efficient and flexible platform for virtual machine > environments requiring multiple support for multiple instruction set > architectures (ISAs). The processor includes multiple cores having disparate > native ISAs and that may be selectively enabled for operation, so that power > is conserved when support for a particular ISA is not required of the > processor. The multiple cores may share a common first level cache and be > mutually-exclusively selected for operation, or multiple level-one caches > may be provided, one associated with each of the cores and the cores > operated as needed, including simultaneous execution of disparate ISAs. A > hypervisor controls operation of the cores and locates a core and enables it > if necessary when a request to instantiate a virtual machine having a > specified ISA is received. > > And a little further down, in the Description section: > The present invention relates generally to data processing systems, and > more particularly, to processors for running multiple virtual machines > having disparate instruction set architectures. > > > Mark Post > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
