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Parallels 3.0 Announced, 3D Graphics Included
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes "For some time Mac users have been waiting to see who would bring 3D graphics to a Windows emulation/virtualization solution under OS X. It looks like Parallels is going to be the winner. They have announced an RC of Parallels 3.0, with the final to be available 'in a few weeks.' For anyone else tired of Bootcamp or rebooting to play a Windows game, it look like the solution is finally here; I'm not counting out VMWare entirely. Obviously it will depend on how soon they can catch up, but there is some serious first-mover advantage here for Parallels."
The second release of VMWare Fusion had D3D8 acceleration under XP and it was released a few months ago. It's not like Parallels is first to this party.
Reading about all this virtualisation and emulation stuff reminds me of the shapeshifter days on the amiga.
Emulating a mac went from a slow and laborious process to something almost realtime.
The price of this seems a bit harsh though, it pretty much doubles the retail cost of Windows, are Mac users that desperate for this functionality that its worth it?
liqbase
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why in the world would anyone run emulation when they can run Windows natively with bootcamp. If you're going to play games you would obviously want the most speed you can get. I bought a mac, but I'm 98% in the windows. I only use mac to test web based apps in safari. For people like me or for gamers, I don't see why you would ever use paralells emulation. The speed cost is just too high.
Why?
Of all the elements in the system, the graphics interface once shouldn't run slower.
Its just mainly copying data around rather than executable assembly instruction translation/manipulation.
A block of allocated memory can be passed directly to the card without any messing.
Virtualisation is difficult because you are trying to act as middleman between two different operating systems with different ways to do things. However for the graphics, both those operating systems need to already speak the same language to talk with a graphics card, the memory is laid out the same, the commands are the same and the way of talking to it is the same.
liqbase
I see Quake 4 supposedly running at full steam (no specs or framerates though, but I'll give the guy the benefit of the doubt), but how are DX games running on that? Since Q4 is using an OGL engine, I can see why it would be able to perform so well. But it is my understanding that DX games greatly outnumber OGL ones.
Great work otherwise.
I currently run Windows under Parallels, but Linux under VMware Fusion due to the lack of Linux guest tools. The Parallels 3.0 announcement said Linux guest tools were provided, and that was a major reason why I've put down the cash for the pre-order.
Cheers,
Ian
Connectix used to do this (in v3 or so) for the mac. Emulating an x86 CPU on PPC. Basically, they just provided a pass-through OpenGL driver that hit the native driver & hardware.
For native CPU & a pass-through OpenGL stack, it should be pretty close to native speed. Only concerns are:
1. Direct3D/DirectX (what's it called these days?) -- emulating that or converting it to the native graphics driver isn't trivial. Or even a direct mapping.
2. Feature differences between implementations of drivers between the mac & windows. My guess is that most of the big boys use common code in between (especially now) with build setups & wrappers for each platform. But, who knows.
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I bought Parallels when I got my MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, even the latest version causes regular kernel panics. The machine is rock solid without the Parallels kernel modules loaded and grey screens a couple of times a week with them. I've seen it on Core 1 machines running fine, but on Core 2 laptops it's definitely still in the 'avoid like the plague' category.
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Erm, did you read the announcement? Parallels Tools for Linux are in 3.0...
I'm afraid you might be confusing emulation with virtualization. In theory virtualization should add little to zero overhead. Virtualizing certain aspects such as memory access or CPU usage will have some overhead but virtualizing GPU usage should be negligible. We'll see how well they did when it is released but I would be it will run most software at near direct boot performance. Remember virtualization is Native, it will still be using the same Native machine calls that would be used with direct booting.
You're an idiot.
Virtualization presents no overhead when chips with that technology built in and enabled. Lots of machines do not come with this turned on by default, so naturally they're going to suffer a massive performance hit. We had this problem constantly at the HP repair depot - we'd get commercial line laptops back with complaints of "Virtualization is too slow/does not work on this machine." Quick check in the BIOS - oh, look, it's been disabled. Eventually it happened so often that HP support had to tell them to check their BIOS settings when they called in - saved us lots of wasted time replacing the entire logic board when all it took was a BIOS setting to change. It also made many top-dog IT managers very unhappy that it was something so trivial. I bet lots of people lost their jobs over such a simple oversight.
Most people aren't even aware there's an option for that in the BIOS if the chip supports it. If you run it on a chip that doesn't come with virtualization extensions, you WILL suffer quite a performance hit.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
DirectX is a large set of libraries, with Direct3D being the graphics library in the package, with DirectInput being the input module, etc. Some games (id software games come to mind) use DirectX for a number of things, while still using OpenGL for graphics. The only confusion about the name is in your head, really :)
Regarding performance, it seems to me that even if there *is* a performance hit (and there probably will be), the purpose here is not getting the world's best gaming rig. I don't think anyone here is convinced any product in the Apple lineup will ever be that. The purpose is getting enough performance to run games decently without hiccups getting in the way of your fun. And I think it quite likely they'll succeed in that.
As a Mac user who ONLY uses Windows for the few games I enjoy which don't have a Mac equivalent, I have yet to find the rebooting aspect of BootCamp to be slow in the least. Shutting down OSX has always been a quick-fast-and-in-a-hurry process, with the whole machine completely down in about 15 seconds, tops. Windows, it seems, performs better than I have ever seen it on my iMac and boots up completely in just under a minute or so. In fact, rebooting into Windows on my iMac takes FAR less time than it does to start VirtualPC on my iBook. If I am going to play a game for a couple of hours at a stretch, then I fail to see how a simple minute or so to get Windows up and running is too much of a price to pay.
Parallels and Bootcamp don't exist for die hard Macintosh users. As you say, for decades you haven't cared.
You're missing the point of these tools entirely - they exist for people like me: die hard Windows/Linux users that have always been disdainful of the Mac for various reasons (for me it was gaming and learning curve, for others it was legacy application support, for others it was hatred of a one button mouse, etc).
Now there's a way I and the zillions of others who are now jaded with Microsoft can buy a sweet Apple computer that are all the rage now - all the kids are using them and they're all over the TV, so they must be good, right!? - with the confident knowledge that I can still boot to Windows if I need to, or use Parallels to run my games, or whatever.
I've been a die hard PC user since XT days but now the Macintosh is appealing to me specifically because of these features. I'm a lot closer to spending my $$$ on a Macintosh now than ever before, and many of my PC using friends have already made the switch.
You and the rest of the Mac guys don't have to pay any attention to it and can smugly assume superiority, but you might as well wait until everyone like me has already switched over!
It enabled me to finally convince my boss to dump his Windows box, for one thing. Without Parallels that would never have happened, because he thought he needed it. In reality there was not a single thing he does that required Windows, but this gave him the security blanket. And now he no longer switches to Windows at all.
Hey, ignore that idiot AC. Even die hard Macintosh users can see the usefulness of Parallels and Bootcamp. I'm all for basing Windows, but to say that all the applications that run on Windows are useless is just trolling or cultish.
I have never quite understood the them and us feelings of some users. Personally I use a computer to get my job done and I don't give a flying flip what "kind" of other people are coming to join the party. To be honest I'm glad of all the users who want to run my chosen platform as it makes it better supported and more likely to improve...
:D
Recently I've "moved" from Mac OS X to Ubuntu, because REALLY like having a system that updates all of my software on its own. I didn't move because Ubuntu is cool, or because Mac OS is crappy, but because it makes my job easier. Tools like Parallels will allow Windows users who want to move to Mac OS for whatever reason do so more easily, and that can only be a good thing for your chosen platform. Embrace the newbies
HOWEVER, having said that I can see your point about "Macintosh Explorer", I think my eyes might actually be bleeding that thing is horrible.
Yup, the announcement in the blog says nothing about Linux Tools, only the comments mention them. It's the upgrade page that actually mentions the Linux Tools.
More importantly, what do these tools do? If I were to seriously consider running OSX with Linux under it in Parallels, I'd like to know what exactly this gives me.
Of course, Linux isn't the only other x86 operating system out there. The BSD family is, for instance. I know people who swear by the OpenBSD firewall tool, for instance. However, I can't gauge the importance of not having these tools unless I actually know what they're for.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Close. It wasn't OpenGL, it was GLIDE. and version 2. (click here if you want to flash back to heady days of decent II and Dark Forces II)
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
Also parallels has linux and windows versions of their current products. So it is safe to assume they will have a linux version of this as well. This means cedega faces a new kind of competition. Competition is always a good thing.
Virtualization presents no overhead when chips with that technology built in and enabled.
Don't know where you get that idea.
VMWare, which is practically synonymous with "virtualization" basically doesn't benefit much at all from having VT enabled in the BIOS. Most of the overhead is associated with I/O, can be as much as 50% of the bandwidth and 65% of the latency, and for which turning on VT will help not at all. Don't believe me? Just run a database benchmark, like the Postgrest OSDB test. Or just try ftp'ing large files to/from a virtual machine.
As for compute, the overhead is 5% at most, WITHOUT VT AT ALL.
VT has practically no affect on virtualization performance.
The main benefit of VT is that if you enable it in the BIOS, then Xen and technologies like it can virtualize non-paravirtualized operating systems.
C//
I'm a Mac user. Yes, I demand that developers do things differently on the Mac than on any other platform. If they don't, I don't care if they get tired of me, because I don't want their applications.
You don't just install crap all over my Mac. I want a single, simple bundle that I can install using drag-and-drop, and uninstall by dragging it to the Trash. If you absolutely need to install additional stuff, then:
If you don't do that, your application will flop on the Mac. If you create an application for the Mac, make it a Mac application and not just a Windows port.