Intel® Virtualization Technology for Connectivity

Enhance application and workload response times on a virtualized system by improving CPU utilization and I/O bandwidth. Today's multi-core servers need advanced I/O technologies to supply enough data to avoid starving their massive execution resources.

Intel® Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (Intel® VT-c) is a collection of I/O virtualization technologies that enables lower CPU utilization, reduced system latency, and improved networking and I/O throughput. Intel® VT-c is one of the key component technologies suite under Intel® Virtualization Technology.

Intel® VT-c enables balanced high-end platforms

Server consolidation using virtual machines (VMs) on fewer physical servers lowers data center capital and operating costs. Larger workloads also take advantage of dramatic performance improvements from the latest multi-core Intel® processors.

To optimize these opportunities, Intel® VT-c provides I/O technologies that optimize virtualized performance:

• Enhanced data acceleration across the Intel® multi-core processors platforms
• Improved data processing performance across multiple queues on the network controller
• Direct VM connectivity and data protection between the VMs

A multi-faceted approach to I/O virtualization

Intel® VT-c consists of platform-level technologies and initiatives that work together to deliver next-generation virtualized I/O:

• Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology (Intel® I/OAT) minimizes the bottlenecks that can result from a server's I/O subsystem being overwhelmed by the large data flows associated with virtualized workloads and multi-port GbE and 10GbE network adapters
• Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) dramatically improves traffic management within the server, helping to enable better I/O performance from large data flows while decreasing the processing burden on the software-based Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM)
• PCI-SIG Single-Root Input/Output Virtualization (SR-IOV) is a specification by PCI-SIG, an electronics industry consortium, that eliminates the VMM's software-based switch from the path of network I/O to the VM, allowing the VM to access network hardware directly. Removing that impediment is a significant step toward enabling virtualized applications to achieve near-native performance. Intel continues to be deeply involved in SR-IOV's evolution