QLogic 8200 Series is the Adapter of Choice for Converged Data Centers - Manual (Page 4)

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advantage over emulex; QLogic improves server performance by providing
line-rate network bandwidth while limiting CPU overhead.
Figure 3. Dual Port Bi-directional Throughput and CPU
NIC and Teaming Performance
NiC Dual-port Bi-directional Case
First, the overall ethernet performance of the adapters were evaluated. to
do this, a real-world test scenario was created using both ports of a dual-
port adapter. Bi-directional data was sent through each simultaneously.
the testing verified that the QLogic adapter again holds a significant
advantage in CPU efficiency, averaging more than a 31 percent advantage
over emulex between 2 – 20 threads (Figure 4).
Figure 4. CPU Utilization
again, this becomes even more evident when looking at the throughput
normalized by the percentage of the CPU that is required to drive
the transactions. to calculate this number, the total throughput
transmitted and received by both ports was divided by the average
CPU percentage required to drive the i/O. the results show the
QLogic adapter’s advantage over the emulex adapter to deliver
high throughput rates while minimizing CPU utilization (Figure 5).
the QLogic adapter holds an average efficiency advantage of 49 percent
over the emulex adapter.
Figure 5. Dual Port Bi-directional CPU Efficiencies
CPU effectiveness in regards to i/O will emerge as a key factor in maximizing
data center efficiencies as well as consolidation efforts. this stands true
for a couple of reasons. First, consolidation is creating denser server
environments, which in turn are driving higher throughput requirements
for business-critical applications. Second, by lowering CPU requirements
to process i/O, virtualization ratios can be maximized to fully optimize
servers. the QLogic 8200 Series Converged Network adapters provide
the scalability advantages that will be required by future enterprise-class
data centers.
NiC teaming Failover Case
to test the ability of an adapter to meet the high availability and high
throughput requirements of an enterprise data center, measurements
were taken for total throughput of all data sent and received across an
increasing workload. During this time, a failover state was replicated to
demonstrate a high-availability environment. this data was then averaged
across the CPU usage consumed over the testing period to determine the
adapter’s efficiency. average throughput by overall CPU usage provides an
excellent estimate of the overhead imposed by the adapter while running
the benchmark and handling network interrupts. in addition, it serves
to demonstrate each adapter’s networking performance capabilities and
potential to efficiently scale.
During the testing, the QLogic 8200 Series adapter outperformed the
emulex adapter by an average of up to 27 percent or 3.9Gbps over
increasing workloads from 4 – 20 threads with bi-directional send and
receive i/O (Figure 6).
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