AES-NI (AES New Instructions) from SandyBridge CPUs are not forwarded to Guest

[USBProb]

Problem is there ​http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=42951 documentated. Host (Intel i5 2500K) shows in CPU-Z AES support, in Guest there is now AES-NI support. I think that can be solved with a (V-BOX)BIOS-Update, had a notebook with the same problem, BIOS update and then AES-NI worked. Perphaps these links help ​http://communities.intel.com/thread/23583 and ​http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/582628-aes-ni-support-truecrypt-sandy-bridge-problem.html

[harm ten Napel]

This problem still exists on Virtualbox 4.2.8 , I'm using a guest OS that supports AES-NI (OEL5) but it's not passed to the guest, the following C program will tell you if AES instructions work:

$ cat aes.c
#include <stdio.h>
#define cpuid(level, a, b, c, d)                        \
        asm("xchg{l}\t{%%}ebx, %1\n\t"                  \
            "cpuid\n\t"                                 \
            "xchg{l}\t{%%}ebx, %1\n\t"                  \
            : "=a" (a), "=r" (b), "=c" (c), "=d" (d)    \
            : "0" (level))


int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
        unsigned int eax, ebx, ecx, edx;
        cpuid(1, eax, ebx, ecx, edx);
        if (ecx & (1<<25))
                printf("aes\n");
        else
                printf("no aes\n");
        return 0;
}

$ ls
aes.c
[oracle@oel5vmware c]$ make aes
cc     aes.c   -o aes
[oracle@oel5vmware c]$ ./aes
aes

This is on vmware 9 where it works, however on vbox it doesn't:

[oracle@oel64 ~]$ vi aes.c
[oracle@oel64 ~]$ make aes
cc     aes.c   -o aes
[oracle@oel64 ~]$ ./aes
no aes
[oracle@oel64 ~]$ uname -a
Linux oel64.fritz.box 2.6.32-300.32.1.el5uek #1 SMP Fri Jul 20 00:51:02 EDT 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[oracle@oel64 ~]$ 

[Trevor Hemsley]

Issue exists on linux hosts with 4.2.12 (have not tried 4.2.14 yet but nothing is listed in the Changelog).

Has anyone from Innotek/Sun/Oracle/Virtualbox even opened this bug?

[Frank Mehnert]

The bug is already open, so no need to open it again. In short term there will be no support for AES-NI instructions in VirtualBox. That might be different in medium term.