Intel Working On Improving Linux Virtualization With VT-d Scalable Mode

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Working On Improving Linux Virtualization With VT-d Scalable Mode

Intel VT-d revision 3.0 adds a "Scalable Mode" translation mode for enabling Scalable I/O virtualization and the patches have been in the works for supporting this within the Linux kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-VT-d-Scalable-Mode

[Ericg]

Michael Typo: Intel open-source developer Ashok Raj has written a detailed block post covering this

[torsionbar28]

Intel playing catch-up to AMD EPYC features, lol.

[polarathene]

Intel playing catch-up to AMD EPYC features, lol.

The blogpost was a bit over my head to follow. What is the equivalent features on EPYC that already exist?

[torsionbar28]

The blogpost was a bit over my head to follow. What is the equivalent features on EPYC that already exist?

The new intel feature is about making more effective use of limited bandwidth. SR-IOV is PCIe passthrough to a VM, which can be partitioned. This new intel feature allows for more fine grained partitioning. It is not a common use case, but when you only have 42 PCIe lanes to work with, and a huge number of high I/O virtual machines, a large server can become bandwidth constrained. EPYC solves this by offering 128 lanes of PCIe - triple the bandwidth of even the top Xeon platinum chip.

Essentially, this new feature allows intel chips to make better use of a finite resource. AMD chips solve this by providing more resources.