M4 Mac mini nested virtualization performance benchmark

[GainSury]

Test Env

• EL0: MacOS 15.1 Mac mini 16GB 256GB
• EL1: UTM 4.6 beta + Fedora Server aarch64 41-1.4 10GB
• EL2: QEMU + KVM Fedora Server aarch64 41-1.4 8GB
• M2 Mac Mini
• M1 Macbook Pro

BenchMark:

• Geekbench 6
• fio

fio args

fio --name=test --directory=/path/to/dir --rw=randrw --bs=4k --size=1G --numjobs=1 --time_based —runtime=30 --group_reporting
(m1 macbook pro with —runtime=90)

Results

Device	Read IOPS	Read Speed (MB/s)	Write IOPS	Write Speed (MB/s)	Geekbench6 ST
M4 Mac mini	8647	35.4	8660	35.5	3925
UTM Appl Virt (EL1)	3532	14.5	3526	14.4	3362
QEMU/KVM (nested/EL2)	2606	10.7	2593	10.6	2875
M1 MacBook Pro	10400	40.7	10400	40.7	2402
M2 Mac mini	5227	21.4	5230	21.4	2608
EL0 vs EL1	40.85%	40.96%	40.72%	40.56%	85.66%
EL0 vs EL2	30.14%	30.23%	29.94%	29.86%	73.25%
EL1 vs EL2	73.78%	73.79%	73.54%	73.61%	85.51%