On 3/24/08, Gus Wirth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > RB W wrote: > [snip] > >> The video can also be a performance killer. The Intel solution uses > >> shared memory, which means memory access has to be divided up between > >> the graphics and the CPU which leads to contention. You don't specify if > >> the AMD solution with the Radeon X1270 has dedicated memory or not. If > >> you have dedicated memory for the video, you are going to get better > >> performance because you won't have memory contention. > >> > > > > I was thinking that if under XEN everything is networked I could run > > only one instance using the actual video and then either SSH to the > > CentOS and other instances and/or VNC/ssh forward the GUI apps as > > needed. Do I still run into contention in this scenario? In effect I > > was thinking of running every instance "headless" except for the one I > > want to "See". I would be comfortable with this because Linux is > > getting to the point where "pagers" have so many variations you can > > segregate anything into any number of virtual presentations of local > > and remote apps. > [snip] > > The competition between video and the CPU for RAM still exists with a > shared memory arrangement. The video has to refresh the screen at a > certain rate, usually 60 times a second. For each pixel on the screen > you are probably reading out 3 bytes for 24 bit color. RAM timing for > video is a hard limit, so the CPU has to yield for every video access, > so the CPU suffers. Of course, you might have so much excess processing > power for what you are doing that you will never notice. > > Gus >
I see what you are saying. Ideally I would like to have really just one primary desktop with other instances that I can occasionally run just because I can and I want to test with other distros as desktop environments. Really exploiting hardware virtualization is something I want to do to create say 3-5 servers dedicated and optimized for a particular purpose and trimmed down for security optimization. I liked the VMWare method even on the current P4 Mobile 1.8GHz w/ 768MB RAM but you could really only get one VM running especially if you ran the Big Fat XP instance. With Linux doing maybe 1-2 instances at a time. Knoppix live CD was about the best going with VMWare on this older Laptop (circa 2002). rbw -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
