Which is faster: Virtual machine (better hardware) or native (worse hardware) for...

[scootermaster]

...synthesis tools?

I've got a Early 2011 Macbook Pro. Quad Core 2.0ghz i7 with 16 gigs of ram. I'm running Xilinx ISE 14.4 under VMWare Fushion (WinXP), and I'm wondering if it'd run faster on my Windows box. That's a Core2Duo 2.4ghz, 4gigs ram, Windows 7.

I think it might be a fairer fight if the Windows box had 8gigs of ram, but honestly, I can't see much of a difference in VM performance under the MBP with 16 vs. 8. I feel like Mountain Lion has atrocious memory management.

Anyway, the laptop will get an SSD next week, so I assume that'll make it a lock, but I figured I'd ask and see which you guys thought would run these synthesis tools faster.


Thanks!

 

[Chiefcrowe]

If the VM has the same amount of RAM then my guess the physical PC would be faster.

 

[Paperlantern]

In my opinion, overall performance will be better on the Macbook i7 VM. RAM does not matter with "speed" unless you are using all or more RAM than you have available. Roughly a four year+ spread in CPU technology, the i7, even in a VM will smoke the core2duo.

 

[ViRGE]

In my opinion, overall performance will be better on the Macbook i7 VM. RAM does not matter with "speed" unless you are using all or more RAM than you have available. Roughly a four year+ spread in CPU technology, the i7, even in a VM will smoke the core2duo.

Agreed. There is a performance hit for using the VM, but the vastly faster processor more than makes up for it.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

ah you're right.. i forgot that the cpu was that much older!

 

[wirednuts]

reminds me of how its faster to use my atom netbook to vnc into my server for web browsing then it is to just use the netbook itself

 

[scootermaster]

Thanks for the responses, guys. I was just hoping to find a way of speeding up this process, but I guess P&R just takes awhile, regardless.

Monday -- when my SSD arrives -- can't come fast enough!

 

[KentState]

From practical experience, virtualizing our DB environment from physical 24-core servers to 16 vcore machines actually increased performance greatly with the amount of RAM being equal.