MPX Feature Deprecation in Virtual Machines

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Memory protection extensions (MPX) were introduced in Intel Skylake generation CPUs and provided hardware support for bound checking. This feature will not be supported in Intel CPUs beginning with the Ice Lake generation.

Starting with ESXi 6.7 P02 and ESXi 7.0 GA, in order to minimize disruptions during future upgrades, VMware will no longer expose MPX by default to VMs at power-on. A VM configuration option can be used to continue exposing MPX.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

Resolution

To re-enable this feature, open the virtual_machine.vmx and add cpuid.enableMPX = TRUE. For more information, see Set Advanced Virtual Machine Attributes .

Additional Information

Supported CPU features may differ between different versions of VMware Fusion or macOS
MPX Feature Deprecation in Virtual Machines