Sun Microsystems, the company behind VirtualBox, its x86 virtualization product, has announced the release of the final and stable version of VirtualBox 3.0. The open-source, cross-platform visualization software comes with several enhancements and new features, like for example improved 3D support and the introduction of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) in virtual machines.

“Sun released VirtualBox 3.0, a major update introducing Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP) in virtual machines as well as much improved 3D support. See the changelog for a complete list of all changes,” explained Sun Microsystems’s Frank Mehnert.

Just in case you are not aware what a virtualization tool is useful for, here is a brief explanation. While using your Mac OS X powered machine for example, you will one time want to visit a certain web page, but much to your chagrin you will discover that the development geniuses behind it made sure it will work only in Internet Explorer. No problem, with VirtualBox 3.0 you can run a virtual version of Windows on your machine and access the web page. This sort of thing happens to me every time I want to access my online banking account and I cannot access it unless I use IE, which is a shame because I would much rather user Firefox 3.5.

VirtualBox 3.0 highlights:
- Works with Windows, Linux, Mac and OpenSolaris
- The option to run up to 32 virtual CPUs
- You can run games that require Direct3D 8 or Direct 3D 9 in VirtualBox
- Support for OpenGL 2.0 for Windows, Linux and Solaris has been added
- Support for Linux kernel 2.6.31
- A very long list of fixes.
- Minor changes concerning various host versions of VirtualBox

If you would like to get VirtualBox 3.0, a download location is available here.
If you would like to view the VirtualBox 3.0 changelog, you can do so here.