Parallels gives virtual machines their own graphics

Virtualisation specialist Parallels has released technology enabling a single multi-processor system to act as several machines with little performance hit.

Parallels' Workstation Extreme is designed for installation by manufacturers of workstations targeted at demanding 3D applications such as seismic mapping, computer-aided design, visualisation and digital content creation.

James Raquepau, Parallels manufacture alliances director, said this type of user typically needs two or three machines running different applications and software environments related to a particular task.

"They have not been able to use virtualisation because the software has to emulate the graphics card, which chews up the CPU performance," he said.

The Workstation Extreme system assigns a separate graphics card, and set of processor cores, to each virtualised machine and provides 95 per cent or more of native performance, he explained.

The advantage is that the user can optimise each machine for the application it is running, control each from a single keyboard and mouse without recourse to a KVM switch and swap data easily between applications.

The system was developed with HP and graphics specialist Nvidia. The first platform to use it will be HP's Z800 workstation, with a choice of Nvidia's Quadro FX 3800, FX 4800 and FX 5800 graphics cards.