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Modern hardware-assisted desktop virtualization products (like VMWare Workstation or VirtualBox) normally provide the guest OS with a virtual graphics adapter that has a limited functionality.
Is it possible to switch the adapters, i.e provide guest OS with direct access to the real graphics adapter, and assign a virtual graphics adapter to the host OS? Is there any software that has this functionality? If not, is it possible to develop such system? Let’s assume we only have a single guest OS.
It should be possible soon with using VGA passthrough as implemented by Xen 4 (unstable branch for now):
Quoting the Xen FAQ:
“Xen 4.0.0 is the first version to support VGA graphics adapter passthrough to Xen HVM (fully virtualized) guests. This means you can give HVM guest full and direct control of the graphics adapter, making it possible to have high performance full 3D and video acceleration in a virtual machine“
“Xen VGA passthrough requires IOMMU (Intel VT-d) support from the motherboard chipset, from the motherboard BIOS and from Xen.”
Note that only a few motherboard support IOMMU for now. See the FAQ for more info.