Quoting from the AMD official announcement:
AMD today announced broad availability of the latest version of its I/O virtualization technology specification, which is enhanced with stronger and more secure input/output connections. Together with AMD Virtualization Technology (AMD-V), the AMD I/O Virtualization Technology Specification revision 1.2 is designed to provide high throughput and scalability to improve overall system efficiency, reliability and security.
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The IOMMU 1.2 specification is designed to be used by hypervisors and operating systems in both virtualized and non-virtualized environments, and is useful for server consolidation, protecting operating system integrity, and secure initialization.
As part of its ongoing efforts to actively collaborate with hardware and software developers, AMD’s I/O specification is also an aspect of AMD’s “Torrenza” initiative to co-develop accelerated computing processes. IOMMU 1.2 is the basis for AMD’s Tightly Coupled Accelerators, which will allow third-party chipsets to perform specific functions while off-loading general computing functions managed efficiently by the AMD Opteron processor. Through collaboration with partners such as Broadcom, HP, Microsoft and NVIDIA, IOMMU 1.2 highlights AMD’s strong commitment to open partner development…