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@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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
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