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Currently Intel's line of 64-bit chips that support Intel Virtualization
Technology (VT) (Vanderpool/Silverpool) are the best choice for use with
virtualization software. This includes their laptop and desktop chips,
the Core 2 series and their Xeon series server chips. AMD has
their own chip-virtualization technology called AMD-V (Pacifica), but it
is currently only offered (according to that I could find on the AMD
website) in their Opteron series workstation/server chips.
Even though AMD offers chips with similar functionality, I recommend
Intel because although both VT and V are relatively new, Intel-VT has
been out longer and is likely to have more support from virtualization
software vendors.
I do not get into many 32-bit vs. 64-bit debates because I usually do
not think the extra width makes a lick of difference. However, it is
important when designing a new virtualization infrastructure to go with
64-bit chips, because a 64-bit enabled host server is required to host
64-bit Virtual Machines (VM). Since VMs are often used as test beds for
new software or developing applications, you will want to be able to
easily deploy a 64-bit version of an OS so you can test a 3rd party application or
your own application in it.
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