Apple Boot Camp, Windows XP and Xen Sitting in a Tree

So today I came across this site for Apple’s Boot Camp.

Basically the concept behind Apple’s Boot Camp is to allow users to install Windows XP side by side with MacOSX, which many people have been trying to do since the first Mac’s shipped with Intel based processors.

So now it is possible to run Windows XP on a Mac with Apple’s blessings.

Here is where things get interesting: Throw Xen 3.0 into the mix. For those that don’t know what Xen is, it is a hardware virtualization technolgoy (based ont he linux kernel) that allows multiple OS’es to run on the same hardware at the same time. It allows concurrent access to the network, hard drives, memory, cpu etc. Prior to Xen 3.0 you needed to have an OS specifically compiled for Xen in order to run it. That has all changed with the new technology included in the latest processors from Intel (and soon AMD – June 2006 I think). The new processors have a technolgoy called Virtualization that allows hardware virtualization applications like Xen (and VMWare) to run OS’es that are not compiled natively for Xen itself (such as OSX and Windows XP).

This is where I think there is a huge opportunity for Apple (and for all I know they might actually be working on this already, I haven’t a clue). To allow Xen to boot OSX as a Xen Dom0 (the OS that is allowed access to the Xen kernel for control over the other OS’es on the virtualized machine). Then boot Windows XP as a DomU. Then a user would be able to boot their computer, access OSX and switch to Windows XP all in one machine.

An interesting thought… If you can get both OS’es to boot at turn on, and used OSX as the Dom0, then you would be able to access the Windows XP virtual machine via the Mac OSX RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) client and never have to actually leave OSX or figure out how to switch between the two. Oh man… my head spins… I need to get a MacBook Pro and start working on that.

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