With the adoption of virtualization support on the x86 architecture, virtual machines are actively evolving and becoming mainstream. Compare and contrast the Intel VT-x and AMD’s AMD-V virtualization technologies.(Information on AMD-V can be found at http://sites.amd.com/us/business/itsolutions/ 
virtualization/Pages/resources.aspx.)

a. Which one could provide higher performance for memory intensive applications with large memory footprints?

b. Information on AMD’s IOMMU support for virtualized I/O can be found at http://developer.amd.com/documentation/articles/pages/892006101.aspx. What do Virtualization Technology and an input/output memory management unit (IOMMU) do to improve virtualized I/O performance?