Abstract

    Running operating systems in a virtual environment is necessary to allow isolated systems to share the same hardware resources. The hypervisor handles the resource management and presents to the virtual operating system a user configurable hardware structure that can differ from the physical hardware structure. Some applications, like COMSOL Multiphysics, need to detect correctly the underlying hardware in order to obtain the best performance. This paper investigates how virtualized hardware to real hardware mapping affects the performance of the software running in a virtualized operating system.