AMD has supported SLAT through the Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) technology since the introduction of its third-generation Opteron processors (code name Barcelona).
In order to make this translation more efficient, processor vendors implemented technologies commonly called SLAT.
This increases the importance of caching values from intermediate levels of the host and guest page tables.
[3] A VMware research paper found that RVI offers up to 42% gains in performance compared with software-only (shadow page table) implementation.
[4] Tests conducted by Red Hat showed a doubling in performance for OLTP benchmarks.
[5] Extended Page Tables (EPT) is an Intel second-generation x86 virtualization technology for the memory management unit (MMU).
EPT is required in order to launch a logical processor directly in real mode, a feature called "unrestricted guest" in Intel's jargon, and introduced in the Westmere microarchitecture.
VM exits are no longer necessary when execution context switches between unsigned usermode and signed kernel mode.