Intel has patched Thread Director in Linux to improve virtualization performance on hybrid Intel CPUs (via Phoronix). It's not clear exactly how much more performance users can expect on virtual machines, but Intel cites up to a 14% boost in 3DMark. It also seems Linux will be getting more of these patches to further improve the Intel CPU experience on Linux virtual machines.
Although Thread Director is best known as the software that has improved performance on Intel's 12th Generation and newer CPU in Windows, it also exists for Linux under the same name and works in the same way. Because many modern Intel CPUs use big P-cores and small E-cores at the same time, it's necessary to carefully assign workloads to achieve optimal performance.
Virtualization undoubtedly makes this process even more complicated, yet as Intel says in its patch for Thread Director, "ITD is necessary for Windows VMs." Implementing virtual machine optimizations seems to not be all that different in Linux or Windows, at least on a fundamental level.
The patch notes come with a table full of performance figures for 3DMark Time Spy and Fire Strike using the Core i9-13900K. Across graphics and CPU performance, most cases saw performance deltas in the region of plus or minus 3%, but six of the 17 individual tests saw performance gains of 8% to 14%. However, these performance gains were in the CPU-bound workloads, which aren't exactly comparable to CPU-bound gaming scenarios.
While it may be strange that Intel would mention gaming performance in a patch for virtual machines, that's actually the whole focus of the Thread Director improvements. As the patch notes say, "We have the use case to run games in the client Windows VM as the cloud gaming solution." As Intel's best gaming CPUs are its hybrid chips for desktops, cloud gaming providers will want to use those chips without running into performance issues.
Linux is the most commonly used operating system for the kinds of servers that cloud gaming solutions are run on, but Windows is generally better for running games given that most games are written to run natively on Windows. At least for cloud gaming, this latest patch brings Linux another step closer to feature and performance parity with Windows.
