Re: Xen 4.2.2 / KVM / VirtualBox benchmark on Haswell

[Gordan Bobic <gordan@bobich.net>]

 On Tue, 09 Jul 2013 16:27:31 +0100, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@xen.org> 
 wrote:
> Not sure whether anyone has seen this:
> 
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_haswell_virtualization
>
> Some of the comments are interesting, but not really as negative as
> they used to be. In any case, it may make sense to have a quick look

 Relative figures at least in terms of ordering are similar to what I
 found last time I did a similar test:

 http://www.altechnative.net/2012/08/04/virtual-performance-part-1-vmware/

 My test was harsher, though, because it exposed more of the context
 switching and inter-core (and worse, inter-die since I tested on a
 C2Q) migration overheads.

 The process migration overheads are _expensive_ - I found that on bare
 metal pining CPU/RAM intensive processes to cores made a ~20%
 difference to overall throughput on a C2Q class CPU (no shared caches
 between the two dies made it worse). I expect 4.3.x will be a
 substantial improvement with NUMA awareness improvements to the
 scheduler (looking forward to trying it this weekend).

 Shame phoronix didn't test PV performance, in my tests that made
 a huge difference and put Xen firmly ahead of the competition.

 Gordan