Just to help us all understand "the loop" issue.. Here's an example of driver code which uses the existing MSI-X interfaces, for a device which can work with either 16, 8, 4, 2, or 1 MSI-X interrupt. This is from a new driver I'm working on right now: static int xx_alloc_msix_irqs (struct xx_dev *dev, int nvec) { xx_disable_all_irqs(dev); do { if (nvec < 2) xx_prep_for_1_msix_vector(dev); else if (nvec < 4) xx_prep_for_2_msix_vectors(dev); else if (nvec < 8) xx_prep_for_4_msix_vectors(dev); else if (nvec < 16) xx_prep_for_8_msix_vectors(dev); else xx_prep_for_16_msix_vectors(dev); nvec = pci_enable_msix(dev->pdev, dev->irqs, dev->num_vectors); } while (nvec > 0); if (nvec) { kerr(dev->name, "pci_enable_msix() failed, err=%d", nvec); dev->num_vectors = 0; return nvec; } return 0; /* success */ }