Patent ID: 7694304

Claim:
A hardware apparatus for configuring resources for a plurality of virtual processing elements in a virtual multiprocessor configured to operate on a single microprocessor, the apparatus comprising: a virtual multiprocessor, to prescribe the resources, and to control a configuration state of the virtual multiprocessor; a plurality of virtual processing element contexts, each exclusively corresponding to one of the plurality of virtual processing elements, said each virtual processing element context comprising: first logic, to prescribe whether the virtual processing element that the virtual processing element context corresponds to is permitted to configure the resources; and second logic, having contents to prescribe a subset of the resources that is allocated to the virtual processing element that the virtual processing element context corresponds to; and configuration logic, coupled to said virtual multiprocessor context and said plurality of virtual processing element contexts, to detect whether a particular one of the plurality of virtual processing elements is permitted to configure the resources, to update said virtual multiprocessor context to direct that the virtual multiprocessor enter said configuration state, and configuring to configure the resources by updating the contents of the second logic of a virtual processing element context corresponding to one of the plurality of virtual processing elements.