Virtual Machines with Dedicated Graphics for Software Development

Abstract

Virtual Machines (VM) have increased in performance in recent years due to the new hardware and software features that are being released to both commercial and enterprise usage. The use of Virtual Function Input/Output (VFIO) allows direct mapping of hardware to the virtual machine guest to allow dedicated usage of the hardware. One of these features utilizes passing dedicated graphics cards to the VM guest, while using a secondary graphics card to power the host machine. The advantages to having this particular setup is having a high-mobility device available, but allowing dedicated graphics for software development when needed without the need of moving code to different machines. This paper explains the use of using an externally located, USB-C Thunderbolt dedicated graphics card to run a variety of several virtual machines for software development, providing a plethora of platform options for testing software applications on a single machine.