New Intel Linux Graphics Driver Patches Aim For Better vGPU Performance

Proposed last year were a set of patches aiming to improve the Intel virtual GPU "vGPU" performance in para-virtualized cases by having optimizations around the shared memory region between the guest and Intel GVTg code. With optimizing the workload PV submission and PPGTT PV updates, the glxgears performance could improve by 30~50% while for large media/3D workloads was more around a 4% average improvement.

Xiaolin Zhang of Intel has sent out an entirely new patch series now derived from the work done last year on vGPU/PV optimizations but unmerged.

With the new patches, "In this patch set, PPGTT and GGTT are identified as PV optimization from VGPU memory resource point of view and workload submission is identified as PV optimization from VGPU compute resource point of view. so 3 PV features (PV PPGTT, PV GGTT and PV submission) are designed and implemented to support VGPU model better."

With the 12 new patches proposed, workloads like glmark2 and Antutu 3D are seeing at least 10% higher performance while larger media/3D workloads are seeing less but still measurable improvements for the vGPU guest performance with Intel graphics hardware.

See this patch series for more details on the tentative work for improving the Intel i915 GVT driver code.