On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 10:23 AM, Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 04/20/18 09:28, Alexander Duyck wrote: >> This series is meant to add support for SR-IOV on devices when the VFs are >> not managed by the kernel. Examples of recent patches attempting to do this >> include: >> virto - https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10241225/ >> pci-stub - https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10109935/ >> vfio - https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10103353/ >> uio - https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9974031/ > > Hi, > > Somewhere in this patch series it would be nice to tell us what the heck > a "PF" is. :) > > Thanks. Sorry, I was kind of operating on the assumption of everyone understanding SR-IOV nomenclature. A "PF" is a PCIe Physical Function. When you bring up a PCIe device that supports SR-IOV it is the device that is there to begin with. A "VF" is a PCIe Virtual Function. You could think of as a logical device that is spawned from the physical function using a combination of hardware configuration via the SR-IOV block in the PCIe extended configuration space and kernel/driver features. There are also a number of online resources you could use to research SR-IOV further. Hope that helps to clarify some of this. Thanks. Alex