SLAT

With the announcement that you can run Hyper-V on the Windows 8 client from BUILD, there has been a lot of new interest in this topic, because the Windows 8 client requires SLAT. Running Hyper-V on Windows Server Developer Preview does *not* require SLAT.

What is SLAT?

SLAT (Second Level Address Translation) is a feature of the CPU. It is called “Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI)”, and has been called Extended Page Tables (EPT) by Intel and Nested Page Tables (NPT) by AMD. You can use Wikipedia to look up Intel Nehalem and AMD NPT:

Every Core i3, i5 and i7 supports SLAT. You can look up the supported AMD versions at KB article on AMD

Check with: systeminfo (built in OS)

The easiest way to check if your computer/processor is supporting SLAT is to execute in cmd: systeminfo .

At the end of the results there is a section "Hyper-V Requirements" which is showing 4 elements. All of them has to be "Yes" in order to install Hyper-V on Windows 8 (there is a SLAT element too).

Check with: coreinfo (SysInternals tool)

As of Sep 1, 2011 Mark Russinovich has updated (V3) his utility coreinfo.exe that you can use to detect EPT and NPT (SLAT) support on your CPU. Use the coreinfo -v switch to list the features. An asterisk * next to a feature indicates that it is supported. A minus sign - indicates no support for that feature.

Note: Coreinfo must be executed on a system without a hypervisor running for accurate results.

Here's an example from my Samsung 900x:

Info:

"*" means the feature is present

"-" means it is missing

Here is an example of a CPU that is NOT SLAT capable:

Check with: PowerShell

Alternatively, you can useWindows PowerShell to capture your specific CPU model:

PS C:\Windows\system32> gwmi win32_processor

Caption : AMD64 Family 16 Model 2 Stepping 3

DeviceID : CPU0

Manufacturer : AuthenticAMD

MaxClockSpeed : 2400

Name : AMD Phenom(tm) 9750B Quad-Core Processor

SocketDesignation : XU1 PROCESSOR

NOTE: Be sure to include the specific family/model/stepping since different processor revisions may have different feature sets.

Name Family / Model / Stepping AMD Phenom(tm) 9750B Quad-Core Processor AMD64 Family 16 Model 2 Stepping 3 AMD Athlon(tm) II X3 425 Processor AMD64 Family 16 Model 5 Stepping 2 AMD C-50 Processor AMD64 Family 20 Model 1 Stepping 0

Note Remember to check you BIOS settings. For example, VT-x has to be enabled before coreinfo.exe will tell you it's available.

List of supported CPUs

Does your CPU support SLAT? List it here, it is the wiki way! Thanks in advance.

Servers that support SLAT

Any AMD server CPU based on Barcelona or later architectures. Some early Barcelona editions didn't have RVI, but they're relatively rare. Check this AMD list.

Intel server processors numbered E5500 and higher.

Any Intel CPUs based on Nehalem, Westmere, or Sandybridge micro-architectures. (There may be exceptions, but I'm not aware of any.)

Desktops that support SLAT

Intel processors whose names start with 'i', e.g. i3, i5, i7, i9. (There may be exceptions, but I'm not aware of any.)

Any Intel CPUs based on Nehalem, Westmere, or Sandybridge micro-architectures. (There may be exceptions, but I'm not aware of any.)

Laptops that support SLAT