Chapter 7. POWER7 Enterprise Server performance considerations 277
– Where possible, set the partition’s entitled processing units as close to the anticipated
CPU processing requirements as possible. The more CPU that processing partitions
use as uncapped (for example, beyond their entitlement), the greater the processor
efficiency effects that are caused by increased virtual processor switching.
– When attempting to take advantage of unused shared pool resources, set the number
of virtual processors close to the expected capacity that you are trying to achieve for
that partition.
Setting virtual processors to higher values usually results in reduced processor efficiency
and can result in decreased performance from increased contention.
F