VirtIO vs Emulation Netperf benchmark results

[Alexander Spyridakis <a.spyridakis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For your information, with the latest developments related to VirtIO, I run 
netperf a couple of times to see the exact standing of network 
performance on the guests.

The test was to run netperf -H "ip of LAN node", which tests TCP traffic for 10 seconds.

• x86 - x86:  ~96 Mbps - reference between two different computers
  
• ARM Host  - x86:  ~80 Mbps
• ARM Guest - x86:  ~ 2 Mbps - emulation
• ARM Guest - x86:  ~74 Mbps - VirtIO

From these we conclude that:

As expected x86 to x86 communication can reach the limit of the 100 Mbps LAN.
The ARM board seems to not be capable of the LAN.
• Network emulation in QEMU is more than just slow (expected).
• VirtIO has a far greater performance gain than what was initially stated.

Notes:

• Running netperf from the x86 machine to guest/host, gave slightly higher numbers but resulted in around the same performance ratio.
• Similar results were obtained from an nfs and initrd (whole guest in RAM) guest boot method.
  

Regards.
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