Google didn’t release yet its lightweight operating system for netbooks, Chrome OS, and many people already rushed to customize the early source code to create fully-functional images that can boot inside a virtual machine or on real hardware.
One of these early experiments is particularly interesting for the virtualization community because it modifies the Chromium OS open source code to include Xen.
The one that released this project, called ChromiumOS64, is Teo En Ming, who hacked the code to support 64bit platforms (the Google code only supports 32bit architectures at the moment because it targets Intel Atom CPUs that powers most netbooks) and integrate Xen 3.4.3 RC1.
This 64bit Xen-powered Chromium OS build is able to run Windows virtual machines (from XP to 7, including Server 2000, 2003 and 2008) as long as the physical CPU has Intel VT-x or AMD-V.
It even supports I/O virtualization as long as the CPU has Intel VT-d and the PCI Express graphic card has its drivers included in the build.
Of course the project is available for free and you can even run in from a USB thumb drive.