Apple-Intel architecture
Overview
 
The Apple–Intel architecture is an unofficial name used for Apple Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

 personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

s developed and manufactured by Apple Inc. that use Intel x86 processors, rather than the PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...

 and 68k
68k
The Motorola 680x0/m68000/68000 is a family of 32-bit CISC microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors...

 processors used in their predecessors.
Apple uses a subset of the standard PC architecture
PC System Design Guide
The PC System Design Guide is a series of hardware design requirements and recommendations for IBM PC compatible personal computers, compiled by Microsoft and Intel Corporation during 1997–2001...

, which provides support for Mac OS X and support for other operating systems. Hardware and firmware components that must be supported to run an operating system on Apple-Intel hardware include the Extensible Firmware Interface
Extensible Firmware Interface
The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware...

.
The Intel Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, Core i5, Core i7, and Xeon
Xeon
The Xeon is a brand of multiprocessing- or multi-socket-capable x86 microprocessors from Intel Corporation targeted at the non-consumer server, workstation and embedded system markets.-Overview:...

 processors found in Intel Macs support Intel VT-x, which allows for high performance (near native) virtualization
Native virtualization
In computing, hardware-assisted virtualization is a platform virtualization approach that enables efficient full virtualization using help from hardware capabilities, primarily from the host processors...

, which gives the user the ability to run and switch between two or more operating systems simultaneously, rather than having to dual-boot and run only one operating system at a time.

The first software to take advantage of this technology was Parallels Desktop for Mac
Parallels Desktop for Mac
Parallels Desktop for Mac by Parallels, Inc., is software providing hardware virtualization for Macintosh computers with Intel processors.-Overview:Parallels, Inc...

, which was released in June 2006.
 
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