What is AMD Virtualization and NCQ?

[Demian]

AMD Virtualization: Does anyone know how it works?

Does someone can simply explain me what is NCQ?

 

[madmatt]

A quick search...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Virtualization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_command_queueing

Threads merged.

 

[LeeJend]

WOW, wiki at it's best. Shame they never actually said what virtualization is...

Virtualization - It's a software method for simulating multiple processors on a single chip. The intent is to get some of the benefits of having multiple processors like protecting one program from crashing another that is running concurrently. There is no performance increase since the virtual machines have to fight for limited hardware resources in the single processor. AMD and Intel are both adding hardware to their CPUs to make Virtual machines more efficient.

NCQ - a software "smart" hard drive interface that figures out which data requested is closest to the head and services that request first. Since seek time is in milliseconds vs transfer rates in microseconds you want to spend less time seeking and more time transfering. This can improve drive life and performance, especially with fragmented data.