Virtualization—it’s been around for years, so why is it suddenly so hot? Big changes are underway that will make it mainstream in servers and even client systems. What has changed?
First, the industry has started a transition from single- to multi-core processors… and on the horizon are similar trends in I/O. These trends will continue. So what do we do with all these extra processing units? Virtualization is a natural fit for all of these processing elements. One option is to partition a multi-core system—and dedicate a processor core to a specific “guest” OS.
Second, native support at the processor level will be standard… both Intel and AMD will have native support for virtualization. This will accelerate adoption, drive common instruction sets, and improve memory management.
http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/news/article.php?story=20061003133606938