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:

• 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)
• Virtual Machine Direct Connect (VMDc)
  VMDc provides near native-performance by providing dedicated I/O to virtual machines, bypassing the software virtual switch in the hypervisor completely. It also improves data isolation among virtual machines, and provides flexibility and mobility by facilitating live virtual machine migration.

More information

• Intel® QuickData Technology Software Guide for Linux*

  File Type/Size: (PDF 180KB)

• New Trends Make 10Gb Ethernet the Data-Center Performance Choice

  File Type/Size: (PDF 314KB)

• Intelligent Queueing Technologies for Virtualization

  File Type/Size: (PDF 238KB)

• Intel communities
• Virtual Machine Device Queues

  File Type/Size: (PDF 81KB)

• Advanced Virtualization I/O Queuing Technologies - An Intel-Microsoft Perspective

  File Type/Size: (PDF 197KB)

• Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology (Intel® I/OAT)
• Success story: electronic sports league (ESL) - VMDq deployment with great performance

  File Type/Size: (PDF 679KB)

• IDC Whitepaper: Optimizing I/O Virtualization: Preparing the Datacenter for Next-Generation Applications

  File Type/Size: (PDF 142KB)
  
  IDC discusses PCI-SIG’s new standard of SR-IOV, and how Intel is optimizing I/O virtualization to help businesses by preparing the data centers for the next generation applications.

• Achieving Fast, Scalable I/O for Virtualized Servers With Intel® Virtualization Technology and the PCI-SIG* Single Root I/O Virtualization and Sharing Specification

  File Type/Size: (PDF 229KB)
  
  PCI-SIG’s new standard for SR-IOV, a recent Intel Virtualization Technology enhancement, delivers fast, and scalable I/O bandwidth for virtualized servers to help magnify the benefits of virtualization by enabling higher consolidation ratios and better application performance.