I have not modified any existing drivers, but instead I threw together a bare-bones module enabling me to make a call to pci_iov_register() and then poke at an SR-IOV adapter's /sys entries for which no driver was loaded.

It appears from my perusal thus far that drivers using these new SR-IOV patches will require modification; i.e. the driver associated with the Physical Function (PF) will be required to make the pci_iov_register() call along with the requisite notify() function.  Essentially this suggests to me a model for the PF driver to perform any "global actions" or setup on behalf of VFs before enabling them after which VF drivers could be associated.

I have so far only seen Yu Zhao's "7-patch" set.  I've not yet looked at his subsequently tendered "15-patch" set so I don't know what has changed.    The hardware/firmware implementation for any given SR-IOV compatible device, will determine the extent of differences required between a PF driver and a VF driver.

--
Lance Hartmann


--- On Thu, 11/6/08, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com> wrote:


quoted text
> Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008, 9:43 AM
> On Thu, Nov 06, 2008 at 07:40:12AM -0800, H L wrote:
> > 
> > Greetings (from a new lurker to the list),
> 
> Welcome!
> 
> > To your question Greg, "yes" and "sort
> of" ;-).  I have started taking
> > a look at these patches with a strong interest in
> understanding how
> > they work.  I've built a kernel with them and
> tried out a few things
> > with real SR-IOV hardware.
> 
> Did you have to modify individual drivers to take advantage
> of this
> code?  It looks like the core code will run on this type of
> hardware,
> but there seems to be no real advantage until a driver is
> modified to
> use it, right?
> 
> Or am I missing some great advantage to having this code
> without
> modified drivers?
> 
> thanks,
> 
> greg k-h


      

--
unsubscribe notice
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/