[vbox-dev] Any plan to support SR-IOV?

[Fred Liu]

Brian,

Many thanks for giving me so informative stuff.
I have learnt a lot from them.

Do you mean you will contribute in VBOX to make it(SR-IOV) work?

If it is YES, that is great!

The I/O virtualization is not in the roadmap of VBOX yet.
I just hope to bring it into the considerations of VBOX developers.




Thanks.

Fred

> -----Original Message-----
> From: vbox-dev-bounces at virtualbox.org [mailto:vbox-dev-
> bounces at virtualbox.org] On Behalf Of Brian Johnson
> Sent: 星期五, 三月 04, 2011 7:21
> To: vbox-dev at virtualbox.org
> Subject: Re: [vbox-dev] Any plan to support SR-IOV?
> 
> Fred Liu <Fred_Liu at ...> writes:
> 
> >
> > Thanks for the clarification.
> > Intel 82576 nic has been released for more one year, it will be
> easier and
> easier to find.
> > I/O performance bottleneck is really the barrier to deploy
> virtualization
> confidently.
> > KVM and XEN is sort of ahead of VBOX in this aspect.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Fred
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Alexey Eromenko [mailto:al4321 at ...]
> > Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 10:54 PM
> > To: Fred Liu
> > Cc: vbox-dev at ...
> > Subject: Re: [vbox-dev] Any plan to support SR-IOV?
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 4:42 PM, Fred Liu <Fred_Liu at ...> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Fred Liu
> > > Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 1:53 PM
> > > To: vbox-dev at ...
> > > Subject: Any plan to support SR-IOV?
> > >
> >
> > SR-IOV is a host technology, not a hypervisor one.
> >
> > What hypervisor should support is VT-d, then SR-IOV gets supported
> > automatically.
> >
> > There were few commits in the VBox source tree with regards to VT-d
> > support, but it looks like very early status.
> > In Addition, Hardware is too scarse to test it for community members
> to help.
> >
> 
> Fred,
> 
> I should start off by stating that I work at Intel in the LAN Access
> Division.
> I am responsible for 10Gb Ethernet and Virtualization technologies like
> SR-IOV
> on Intel(R) Ethernet Controllers.
> 
> SR-IOV-capable devices provide configurable numbers of independent VFs,
> each
> with its own PCI Configuration space. The VMM assigns one or more VF to
> a
> virtual machine. Memory Translation technologies such as those in
> Intel® VT-x
> and Intel® VT-d provide hardware assisted techniques to allow direct
> DMA
> transfers to and from the VM, thus bypassing the software switch in the
> VMM.
> 
> The Intel(R) 82599 Ethernet Controllers and Intel(R) 82576 Ethernet
> Controllers support SR-IOV and can be found on a wide selection of
> adapters
> and as LOMs on many server boards. The 82576 is our 1Gb part and
> provides up
> to 8 VFs and 82599 is our 10Gb part with up to 64 VFs.
> 
> To use SR-IOV you need to have VT-d enabled in the server BIOS like the
> previous post stated BUT you also need to have an SR-IOV enabled BIOS.
> Some
> server support VT-d but do not support SR-IOV because the BIOS does not
> setup
> the PCI config space for the VFs. Several server OEMs offer systems
> that have
> SR-IOV enabled, such as the Dell R710 and R910 and most of the current
> Intel
> Server Boards and Systems. I know that other systems have been enabled
> with
> the SR-IOV BOIS so please check your server model and BIOS version
> before
> trying to setup SR-IOV.
> 
> Ecosystem Requirements taken from Patrick Kutch's PCI-SIG SR-IOV Primer
> Revision 2.5 --
> http://download.intel.com/design/network/applnots/321211.pdf
> 
> BIOS
> The BIOS performs a role in partitioning Memory Mapped I/O and PCI
> Express Bus
> numbers between host bridges.
> In many systems, mechanisms for allocating PCI resources to the host
> bridges
> are not standardized and software relies on the BIOS to configure these
> devices with sufficient memory space and bus ranges to support I/O
> devices in
> the hierarchy beneath each host bridge.
> BIOS enumeration code needs to be enhanced to recognize SR-IOV devices
> so that
> enough MMIO (Memory Mapped IO) space is allocated to encompass the
> requirements of VFs. Refer to the PCI-SIG SR-IOV specification for
> details on
> how to parse PCI Config space and calculate the maximum amount of VF
> MMIO
> space required.
> 
> Here are some other links that a Patrick and I have put together.
> 
> Here is a link to a Video that Patrick Kutch did explaining how SR-IOV
> works –
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRHsk8Nycdg
> 
> Here is a link to more technical resources that Patrick has regarding
> SR-IOV.
> http://communities.intel.com/people/Patrick_Kutch?view=overview
> 
> Thanks,
> Brian Johnson
> Intel Corp
> 
> 
> 
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