VirtualBox causing big peaks in CPU

[Derek Broughton]

Chris Jones wrote:

> Derek Broughton wrote:
>> Chris Jones wrote:
>> 
>>>> Too _much_ memory.  Win XP shouldn't need 400Mb of memory in
>>>> VirtualBox, and that's (virtual) memory that will no longer be
>>>> available to your
>>>> Linux tasks.  So you get swapping, and CPU usage.
>>> That entirely depends on a) how much ram the host machine has and b)
>>> what else it is doing whilst it is running the VM with 400Mb ram. If the
>>> conditions are right you can give a VM as much ram as you want...
>> 
>> Sure you can - but if you're seeing huge CPU spikes, that's a clue :-)
> 
> Swapping doesn't normally generate a lot of CPU usage. In fact the
> opposite normally (IME) as the CPU is left waiting for data to be ready
> for it to use.

My experience with thrashing is that you get both CPU and IO increases,
because context switching is CPU intensive
-- 
derek