The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 20, 2012
Filed:
Dec. 03, 2007
Aaron C. Brown, Austin, TX (US);
Douglas M. Freimuth, New York, NY (US);
Renato J. Recio, Austin, TX (US);
Steven M. Thurber, Austin, TX (US);
Aaron C. Brown, Austin, TX (US);
Douglas M. Freimuth, New York, NY (US);
Renato J. Recio, Austin, TX (US);
Steven M. Thurber, Austin, TX (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
Mechanisms to address the situation where an input/output (I/O) fabric is shared by more than one logical partition (LPAR) and where each LPAR can share with the other LPARs an I/O adapter (LOA) are provided. In particular, each LPAR is assigned its own separate address space to access a virtual function (VF) assigned to it such that each LPAR's perception is that it has its own independent IOA. Each VF may be shared across multiple LPARs. Facilities are provided for management of the shared resources of the IOA via a Physical Function (PF) of the IOA by assignment of that PF to an I/O Virtualization Management Partition (IMP). The code running in the IMP acts as a virtual intermediary to the VFs for fully managing the VF error handling, VF reset, and configuration operations. The IMP also acts as an interface to the PF for accessing common VF functionality. Furthermore, the functions of resource assignment and management relative to the VFs and the client partitions that use those VFs, which might normally be done by an entity like a hypervisor, are implemented by this IMP.