Extended Page Tables (EPT) is an Intel second generation x86 virtualization technology for the memory management unit (MMU). When this feature is active, the ordinary IA-32 page tables (referenced by control register CR3) translate from linear addresses to guest-physical addresses. A separate set of page tables (the EPT tables) translate from guest-physical addresses to the host-physical addresses that are used to access memory. As a result, guest software can be allowed to modify its own IA-32 page tables and directly handle page faults. This allows a virtual machine monitor (VMM) to avoid the VM exits associated with page-table virtualization, which are a major source of virtualization overhead without EPT.
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Intel states that the feature is available in all their Nehalem-based CPUs with virtualization support; namely in Core i7, Core i5, Core i3, Pentium G6950 and appropriate Xeons. It is not available in Core 2-based and earlier Intel CPUs.