Patent ID: 8028290

Claim:
A method of managing operation of a processing system supporting multiple instruction sets, wherein said processing system supports execution of multiple operating system images within multiple virtual machines, said method comprising: receiving a request to instantiate a virtual machine having a specified instruction set, wherein the instruction set is an instruction set required for execution of the virtual machine and is specified in conjunction with the request from among the multiple instruction sets supported by the processing system; determining an availability status of a given core that supports the specified instruction set within a processor having multiple cores, at least one core supporting said specified instruction set and at least one other core not supporting said specified instruction set and supporting another instruction set, wherein only one of the multiple cores is selectable for operation at any given time, and wherein power is supplied to only a selected one of the multiple cores that is selected for operation; in response to determining that said given core is available, selecting the given core for execution of the virtual machine from among the multiple cores by applying a power supply voltage to the given core and instantiating said virtual machine on said core; and further comprising in response to determining that said given core is not available, failing instantiation of said virtual machine.