Don’t Waste Those Cores; Virtualize ‘Em

By Bob Scheier
published: Monday, July 07 2008

First, it was a triumphant photo of an experimental Intel 80-core processor. Next,  I saw a shot of a possible future 256-Processor Laptop notebook PC in PC Magazine. And that put me over the edge.

I personally don't need more cores, more MhZ, more L2 Cache, or more anything unless it makes my computer run noticeably faster, more reliably and more securely. What inspires this rant is that even with today's dual-core desktop and notebook processors, simple actions like running a virus scan, loading my accounting software or (heaven forbid!) rebooting put me into time-wasting, finger-tapping mode. 

You can buy dual-core processors for notebooks and desktops today, and quad-core and beyond will undoubtedly follow soon. But the limiting factor in their usefulness isn't the hardware, but the lack of software (applications or operating systems) that can utilize all those processors to solve actual problems. We may be years away from a true multi-threaded, multi-processing version of Windows, but desktop hypervisors are here right now,

But why not use a desktop hypervisor to separate those cores into multiple virtual machines, each of which does something important in the background so that the main task - the one I'm waiting to perform - gets the most processing resources? A few examples of how these VMs could make my life easier:

• Automatically clean and repair the registry after each hardware or software change to prevent OS-related problems, and take one management chore off my plate.

• Run antivirus and firewall software on separate VMs, leaving more horsepower available for applications.

• Devoting an entire core - or two, or three - to CPU-intensive applications such as CAD, speech recognition or even games.

• Devoting an entire core, or several, to background management functions such as continuous disk defragmentation.

• Using one or more cores to run virtual machine hypervisors that automatically devote more, or fewer, cores, to various processing jobs as needed.

• Combining multi-core chips, virtualization and solid-state drives to create on the fly "virtual machines" that spring into action as needed to speed whatever I'm doing, ranging from start-up to the virus-checking that slows my email.

Delivering capabilities like these would pry a lot of money loose from customers' pockets and deliver it to Intel, AMD, Microsoft and all the hardware and software vendors who make a buck when customers upgrade. But more importantly, it would make life better for poor users like me who are left wondering why, with all the supposed power at our fingertips, we're left drumming those fingers in frustration so often.

I'm sure there are start-ups out there who will claim they can already do this, and the big industry players may have some quiet collaboration going on along these lines. But why aren't they shouting it from the rooftops - and beginning to deliver it?