One of the big problems I have with hardware support for Qubes is that Intel continue their cash cow with glacial development of desktop and notebooks processors. The laptops only have 2 cores, which, if you're doing a reasonable amount of VM work is going to be somewhat constrained. Moore's law ain't happening in this space - I was recently considering resurrecting my lovely old Q6600 quad core, which remains not-too-shabby and is 10 years old. Fortunately, it's my view that they will start to be eroded by the 8-core low-power chips that are part of the huge growth in the smartphone/tablet market. These will not do Vt-d and suchlike, but at least may finally encourage Intel to put a few more cores into their notebook/desktop mainstream chips at sensible cost, which would then benefit VM working and Qubes.
Off subject but then again a valid question for those seeking extreme privacy/security. What are their plans for handling INTERDICTION if a person is interested?
The specs are not that great if you ask me. It's only real value is that it has hardware locks for webcam. I'll pass thanks.
