Hi everyone,

I'm currently measuring the memory bandwidth of the Genode Armv8 Linux Virtualization by running tinymembench[1] and lmbench's memory bandwidth[2]. On the NXP I.mx8 the results of both benchmarks showed a degradation of roughly 25 to 35 percent (depending on the exact benchmark) compared to native Linux.

I tried to ensure comparability with the native setup by disabling in native Linux all but one core and fixing this core's frequency to 1 GHz (which should be the frequency Genode uses). Both setups use the same Kernel version. 

To improve the performance I played with the register values controlling caching (clear HCR_EL2.CD - enable S2 Data cacheability; VTCR_EL2.Irgn0 and VTCR_EL2.Orgn0 respectively set to b11 - set Normal memory, Inner/Outer Write-Back Read-allocate No Write-Allocate Cachable). However, this had no significant effect. 

What's your opinion on that? Based on your experience with virtualization, do these values surprise you or is this an expected degradation?

All the best,
Chris

[1] https://github.com/ssvb/tinymembench
[2] http://lmbench.sourceforge.net/