Making Use Of Intel vGPU Support On Linux 4.16 & QEMU 2.12

[GizmoChicken]

up until 2016 Q1, the gvt commits/slides would frequently mention Haswell support:
"Intel GVT-g is a full GPU virtualization solution with mediated pass-through, \
starting from 4th generation Intel Core(TM) processors with Intel Graphics \ processors."

but something changed in 2016 Q2:
" Intel GVT-g for KVM (a.k.a. KVMGT) is a full GPU virtualization solution with \ mediated pass-through, starting from 5th generation Intel Core(TM) processors with \ Intel Graphics processors."

IOMMU/Vt-d/gvt support were the primary motivators why I choose to get a Haswell in 2014 in the first place.

some random sauces:
https://lists.01.org/pipermail/igvt-...ry/001075.html
https://www.redhat.com/archives/vfio.../msg00029.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/c...kvmgt_working/
https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&w=...t+announce&q=b

If I remember correctly, Intel GVT-g for Xen (XENGT) supports processors starting with Haswell, while Intel GVT-g for KVM (KVMGT) supports processors starting with Broadwell.

[Xaero_Vincent]

Does anyone know if this will work on Windows guests? (e.g. so that I can have full DirectX hardware acceleration on Windows in a VM)

Yes. It works on Windows 10 and Android Oreo guests too. I've tested them both awhile back.

[ruthan]

Yes. It works on Windows 10 and Android Oreo guests too. I've tested them both awhile back.

Is there any performance comparision with Vmware virtual 3D drivers? Bad is that is probably usable for Windows 7/8/10, but not for WinXP- retrogaming.

[Royi]

Yes. It works on Windows 10 and Android Oreo guests too. I've tested them both awhile back.

Lets say I have Photoshop on Windows 10 VM on Linux Mint.
Will it have full graphics acceleration?
Is there a simple (Not the Linux Hack style) to get it to work?

[Xaero_Vincent]

Lets say I have Photoshop on Windows 10 VM on Linux Mint.
Will it have full graphics acceleration?
Is there a simple (Not the Linux Hack style) to get it to work?

Yes. You install the Windows Intel graphics driver on the guest. It won't be 100% performance of bare-metal because the iGPU is sharing resources between the host and guest in time slices but assuming the host isn't taxing the GPU while the guest is running, 90%+ of native seems possible. I have done Unigine benchmarks where the the performance of the Windows guest benchmarks were faster than the native Linux versions. You can write a simple bash script that assigns the UUIDs and launches QEMU with the passed through GPU. I did this and I can start it just by running the script.

[Royi]

Is there a way to get those kind of performance with VirtualBox?
Or maybe handle all this QEMU features using UI?

I'm new to Linux and all this terminal hacks make things hard.

[jo-erlend]

Is there a way to get those kind of performance with VirtualBox?
Or maybe handle all this QEMU features using UI?

I'm new to Linux and all this terminal hacks make things hard.

Not currently, but you will be able to use virt-manager eventuelly. It just doesn't work yet, on any distro I've tried, anyway. But the scripts aren't that complicated. Find some templates from a blog and customize it. It would be easier to use a GUI, but text isn't dangerous or scary. Just get over the fact that you don't understand everything and experiment.

Or wait until there's support in your distros virt-manager packages.