Azure VM meltdown and spectre patch performance comparison

Performance comparison between same VMs on Azure based on Ubuntu Server 16.04.LTS. 'Before patch' tests were done at 2017-05-22 and 'after patch' at All tests were done using Geekbench ver.4 in single-core and multi-core modes. Tests were done on A_v2, D_v2 and F-series. Link to Azure blog about Meltdown and Spectre vulnerability patches and link to vulnerability description.

Short summary: I did not notice any performance changes after the patch. There are few fluctuations around +-1% but nothing critical.





Azure Azure VM Performance (CPU)

I`ve tested the most VMs on Azure using GeekBench for Linux and results you can see below, the higher score is better. All tests were done on Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-78-generic x86_64). I`ve tested all v2 VMs and don't touch G,L,NV,NC series due to their specialization. Most of 25 GeekBench tests related to CPU therefore these results shows CPU performance, here is the description of tests. Chart "GeekBench Score / Price per hour" shows the most CPU performant per $. It seems DS2-v2-Promo is the leader and most compute optimized than F,Fs series.

Tests were done:

Geekbench Score Score / Price per hour