August 2011 – Technical Intercourse

Virt-io Networking

I have already been using virt-io for hard-disk emulation in my guest machines under KVM. However, I have never tried virt-io networking before. Seeing that I wanted to upgrade my machines, I thought that I’d give it a try and this is where I noticed the speed bump.

Following some of the instructions at the lib-virt page, I got virt-io networking working for all my VMs. This is the result:

------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to x.x.x.x, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local x.x.x.x port 34610 connected with x.x.x.x port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 113 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec [ 3] 10.0-20.0 sec 116 MBytes 97.3 Mbits/sec [ 3] 20.0-30.0 sec 117 MBytes 97.8 Mbits/sec [ 3] 30.0-40.0 sec 115 MBytes 96.8 Mbits/sec [ 3] 40.0-50.0 sec 115 MBytes 96.4 Mbits/sec [ 3] 50.0-60.0 sec 116 MBytes 97.7 Mbits/sec [ 3] 60.0-70.0 sec 117 MBytes 97.9 Mbits/sec [ 3] 70.0-80.0 sec 116 MBytes 97.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 80.0-90.0 sec 115 MBytes 96.3 Mbits/sec [ 3] 90.0-100.0 sec 117 MBytes 98.0 Mbits/sec [ 3] 0.0-100.0 sec 1.13 GBytes 97.0 Mbits/secvirt-io activated.

------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to x.x.x.x, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local x.x.x.x port 58218 connected with x.x.x.x port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 47.6 MBytes 39.9 Mbits/sec [ 3] 10.0-20.0 sec 49.7 MBytes 41.7 Mbits/sec [ 3] 20.0-30.0 sec 46.5 MBytes 39.0 Mbits/sec [ 3] 30.0-40.0 sec 50.8 MBytes 42.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 40.0-50.0 sec 49.5 MBytes 41.5 Mbits/sec [ 3] 50.0-60.0 sec 47.5 MBytes 39.8 Mbits/sec [ 3] 60.0-70.0 sec 44.9 MBytes 37.6 Mbits/sec [ 3] 70.0-80.0 sec 46.1 MBytes 38.7 Mbits/sec [ 3] 80.0-90.0 sec 45.2 MBytes 37.9 Mbits/sec [ 3] 90.0-100.0 sec 46.2 MBytes 38.8 Mbits/sec [ 3] 0.0-100.0 sec 474 MBytes 39.8 Mbits/secvirt-io deactivated.

As you can see, more than a 200% increase in through-put.

What is more amazing is that this increased bandwidth is not shared directly. This means that two guest VMs running under the same host both enjoy a 100Mbps speed simultaneously, not 100Mbps shared across the two. This is a massive performance boost, especially inter-VM.

Lesson learned – ALWAYS use virt-io for all I/O operations under KVM/libvirt.

Steve Resigns!

Woke up today to news that Steve Jobs has stepped down as Apple’s CEO. Damn.

I will put him squarely as the one person whom I’d like to emulate in my career. I would like to be able to turn out life changing technologies that will make this world a better place to live in.

I wish him the best and good health.

While I will probably never touch his scale, I hope to at least be able to reach his level in every other measure. I hope that I will be able to build Aeste into a company that is at least, worthwhile having around, nurturing highly talented people to their finest.

He’s an inspiration!

Films as Prior-art

In a patent battle, Samsung claims prior-art exists against the iPad patent that is owned by Apple. As evidence, they present a very iPad-isque device being used in a 1968 Stanley Kubrick film – 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This proves that Stanley Kubrick was a design genius and well ahead of his time. The film predicted the iPad a few years early. So, where’s Hal?

Also, Captain Picard unveils the iPad.

ARM Macs?

There has been some rumours that Apple might switch their notebooks to ARM processors away from Intel ones. Does it make sense to me?

While I have a lot of respect for the ARM processor, it is not yet as powerful as the Intel ones. It can probably give the low-end Intel machines like the Atoms, a run for its money, it does not have the necessary processing power to compete against the higher end Intel parts.

That said, there are product niches where the ARM might make better sense than Intel parts. Apple is already very familiar with ARM processors used in their A4/A5 processor for the iPhones and iPads. However, there is the issue of compatibility.

I will say that if there is anyone who can make an architectural shift painless for the user, it has to be Apple, who managed to maintain backwards compatibility from 68K to PowerPC and Intel. They can definitely do it for ARM too, if they want to.

Except that performance will likely take a hit unless they have some spiffy ARM chips coming up in the A6/A7.

Personally, I hope that they do pull it off because it would just further integrate the Apple hardware. With its own ARM based microprocessors, Apple would be able to do things that they wouldn’t, with Intel processors. For example, they can build in DRM into their microprocessors.

I think that Apple definitely wants to go there. They have always loved doing their own hardware. By switching to ARM, this gives them the opportunity to tightly integrate both software and hardware, making projects like OSX86 obsolete.

From a technical stand-point, it can definitely be done. While the ARM processors are slower than Intel parts, the bottleneck in most computing systems today is I/O and a super high-end Intel processor is no use if coupled with a slow harddisk. A combined SSD-ARM system might actually be pretty speedy for most intents and purposes.

All we need is a decently fast processor, speedy flash storage, high speed RAM. That will create a faster over-all computing experience even if it may be slower for specific computationally intensive applications.

I hope that Apple actually does it. Let’s call it the MacBook Hand or the HandBook (get it?). 😀

Magic.

Internships at AESTE

Listen to one of the interns at AESTE talk a little about his internship experience there.

The work we do is HARD – but fruitful.
The working culture is different – in a good way.
You get to meet other interesting people – who will enrich you.

An internship at AESTE is guaranteed to push you to discover strange new things about yourself.

Read what other interns learned through their experiences here.

Apply now!