Analysis of virtio GPU in a containerized environment

Abstract

Virtio technology is a widely spread technology for emulating IO devices in virtualized environments. These environments are then called paravirtualized, because the guest system cooperates with the host system when performing IO tasks to achieve better performance. Virtio GPU is an emulated device for graphics, used for rendering and displaying. One of the benefits of Virtio devices is that most operating systems provide drivers and libraries for them. Despite the popularity of paravirtualization technology, its performance still falls short to those of containers. Containers offer near native speed because the guest and the host share the same kernel. This raises the question whether Virtio GPU device (and driver) should be utilized inside the container. This paper exposes the concept of how Virtio GPU can be integrated with a container, and what the main disadvantages of that solution are. An important lesson learned from this research is that Virtio GPU should not be used inside the container.