Sony Z2: Support for intel virtualization ?

I expect this may have been asked / answered - sorry (tried the search here on NBR). Can someone tell me what level of support the new Sony Z2 has for Intel Virtualization technology?

Specifically I am interested in Intel VT and Intel VT-D?

Also - somewhat off topic - has anyone tried running the Win8 Dev Preview on the Sony Z? I'm trying to figure out if the Z2 will support the full virtualization requirements in Win8 (for running Hyper-V).

I'm asking because I want to use a Z2 for Dev work and want to make sure I understand what level of support the Z2 has for virtualization.

Thanks!

(I should note that I would prefer not to run a modified BIOS. I'm interest - initially - in what the Z2 will support out of the box)

 

Actually the Z2 (in the US at least) can ship with a range of processors including the i7-2640m.

The i7-2640m does support the virtualization features I mentioned above:

Intel® Core? i7-2640M Processor (4M Cache, 2.80 GHz))

I know Sony has had a history of restricting virtualization support on some models (via BIOS restrictions?). So what I am trying to understand is if Sony has removed some level of support for virtualization on the Z2?

Thanks!

 

VT-x supported and enabled.
VT-d supported but disabled. Can be enabled with hacked BIOS or poking with VSS.

 

I'm running the Preview in a VMWare machine without the BIOS hack for VT-d.

 

Thanks pyr0.

Quick question - can you point me to information about what VSS is (or how it can be used to adjust BIOS options).

Thanks!

 

VSS is a table in your BIOS where the BIOS settings get stored. You can activate hidden options by setting the VSS variable for VT-d to 'enabled' but this requires dumping and flashing the modified BIOS back to your Z2. It's not so different from applying the regular BIOS hack just the menus keep hidden.

 

VT-d is for now quite useless unless you're going to run Linux with Xen. No other virtualization software supports it. VT-x, of course, is always nice to have and is luckily easy to enable.

 

Thanks for all the help so-far. I think I have most my questions answered. There is one open question left around Hyper-V and Windows 8. I need to find out if the i7 CPU's which ship in the Z2 support "Second Level Address Translation" (or SLAT).

If anyone has a Z2 with an i7 in it - would you mind running Coreinfo and replying with the output?

Specifically run the following from an admin command prompt:

coreinfo -v

You can get core info here:

Coreinfo

If you see "EPT" or "Extended Page Tables" in the output then the processors should support what Microsoft is calling SLAT.

More info on Windows 8 and SLAT:

Bringing Hyper-V to ?Windows 8? - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

More info on running Coreinfo to find out if SLAT is supported:

How to Check if Your CPU Supports Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) - How-To Geek

Thanks!

 

Checked on Z2 i7 2640 and get: Supports Extended Page Tables (slat)

 

Thanks beaups! Really appreciated.

 

Tested on a Z11.

 

Does one have to have an i7 for this to work? I was under the impression that the only difference in these chips are the clocks and the i7 having more cache.

Are they they all not architecturally the same otherwise?

 

There seems to be some differences between the i5-24xx series and i5-25xx/i7-26xx cpus:
Compare Intel® Products