My stupid Zen 3 Frankenrouter absolutely saturates both directions of a 10Gbit symmetric link, and it's using Linux software bridges, software firewalling, and software routing. At ~400usec at idle, latency is low, but twice that of a host system that has no software bridges. [0]
Some tiny, underpowered ARM box wouldn't have the power to do all that in software, but you're not going to be running VMs on a tiny, underpowered ARM box.
[0] However, the fully-loaded latency is far better than the system with no software bridges; ~1200usec vs ~7200usec. One might conclude that factors other than the software bridges, firewalls, and routing are the significant components of the latency figures.
My stupid Zen 3 Frankenrouter absolutely saturates both directions of a 10Gbit symmetric link, and it's using Linux software bridges, software firewalling, and software routing. At ~400usec at idle, latency is low, but twice that of a host system that has no software bridges. [0]
Some tiny, underpowered ARM box wouldn't have the power to do all that in software, but you're not going to be running VMs on a tiny, underpowered ARM box.
[0] However, the fully-loaded latency is far better than the system with no software bridges; ~1200usec vs ~7200usec. One might conclude that factors other than the software bridges, firewalls, and routing are the significant components of the latency figures.