Xen - VGA passthrough is the way to go!!!

[Linuxxx]

Hello everybody, long time reader - first time poster here!

So, why has nobody already posted THIS:

Uploaded by ubicloud on May 31, 2011
From Ubisoft Quebec City Studio Cloud Computing Team (currently hiring):

This video presents one of our experiments featuring 2 fully 3D hardware accelerated VMs using Xen and GFX passthrough.

The host is a Lenovo ThinkStation S20 with 2 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 running a xenified (Dom0) version of Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit.
Each VM is running a vanilla Windows XP 32-bit with 4Go of RAM and 4 VCPUs.
The native baseline results are very similar.

The video shows the Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.5 using the following settings:
• Renderer: DirectX 9
• Resolution: 1680 x 1050
• Shaders: High
• Textures: High
• Filter: Trilinear
• Anisotropy: 4x
• Occlusion: Enabled
• Refraction: Enabled
• Volumetric: Enabled

If you are interested to join our team, please contact: marie-eve.bolduc at ubisoft dot com

Video:


What are we actually waiting for?
How can we make this usable for the average Linux "Joe"?
Please help!

[Desti]

Yet another senseless technology.

[Linuxxx]

Yet another senseless technology.

Would You please mind explaining exactly why that is so?

[Desti]

Would You please mind explaining exactly why that is so?

You want to use Linux? Buy Windows! That's what it is about.

[Linuxxx]

You want to use Linux? Buy Windows! That's what it is about.

Yes, that is true...
BUT, the least it would do is to make dual-booting unnecessary!
AND, I'm sure Ubisoft is up to something (games in the cloud?), else they would have not made this public, so apparently it is not that useless...

[neuron]

Looks extremely interesting. Saying it's senseless is stupid... Yes, you dont have any use for it. But a lot of people do.

Hell I know a hell of a lot of people who use windows for a web browser, IM, and playing the occasional game. I have a lot of em switched to linux, as they are sick and tired of malware threats/auto update reboots that auto reboot your computer for you/random stuff breaking over time. But a hell of a lot of em wont switch, because it prevents em from playing game X which they do every 2 months.

If I could take their existing windows license, put that in a VM. And let em play their game (in a LOT of cases wine isn't an option). Then that would open up a lot of more potentional users.


Besides, I've switched over a ton of people by letting them fallback to virtualbox/vmware. And after a while they stop needing to, and go 100% native linux. But during the switch, it's an important ability. Otherwise they tend to want dualboot, the second they hit a problem they dual boot into windows. And will stay there until something breaks.

[snuwoods]

This technology has its use. It seems to me that it practically invalidates WINE, although I could stand corrected.

[whizse]

This technology has its use. It seems to me that it practically invalidates WINE, although I could stand corrected.

You would still need a Windows license. Also, Wine integrates with the system, it isn't sandboxed in the same way a virtualized operating system is.

[Desti]

Yes, that is true...
BUT, the least it would do is to make dual-booting unnecessary!
AND, I'm sure Ubisoft is up to something (games in the cloud?), else they would have not made this public, so apparently it is not that useless...

It is useless for consumers and gamers. It is just one more way to protect the current status quo and destroys real Linux games. Cloud streaming games are designed to steal consumer rights and destroy the homebrew mod scene.

[Kano]

That setup seems to be very tricky, maybe i test it too sometimes. I already checked that my sandy bridge system has pci pass-though with xen (but none of my older systems). Would be even cooler with nv+ati cards mixed or even together with intel onboard. Basically a new multicore system should be fast enough to power a virtualized multiseat system, maybe even cheaper than 2 or 3 basic pcs - and with real vga cards attached to each vm then even games are possible, mixed win+linux,...