Cloud native EDA tools & pre-optimized hardware platforms
Dec 15, 2012 / 1 min read
Virtualization technology essentially componentizes a computer system into the following:
PCI Express with Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) enables some of the virtualization to be done in hardware for the I/O devices instead of software, thereby streamlining the Virtualization Intermediary. Of course, hardware runs faster than software for the same function, so PCI Express with SR-IOV helps improve the overall system performance of a virtualized system.
To understand the benefits of PCI Express with SR-IOV, you can watch SolarFlare¡¯s demo that was videotaped in the Synopsys booth at the Intel Developer¡¯s Forum (IDF) conference in 2011 (shown below).
The demo utilizes two servers running Citrix XenServer 6 to showcase the 3x in performance achieved when utilizing PCI Express 2.0 with SR-IOV virtualization technology. By incorporating DesignWare PCIe IP with SR-IOV, SolarFlare¡¯s Dual Port SFP+ 10GbE Server Adapters were able to support hundreds of virtual PCIe functions and thousands of virtual NICs, thus reducing total hardware costs and power consumption, while increasing performance.
It¡¯s tough to explain such complex technology in a blog posting, but in a nutshell, PCI Express with SR-IOV enables virtualization of a single physical I/O device to masquerade as multiple virtualized I/O devices, one for each virtual machine and with complete independence from each other. Learn more abobut PCI Express here.