I have a Mellanox ConnectX-6 EN card installed on a Linux (CentOS) system. I can see two PCIe physical functions (PF) of ConnectX-6 on my system. However, in the product brief of ConnectX-6, it is mentioned that device supports upto 8 Physical function per host. The question is how can I enable remaining 6 Physical functions on the host machine?
Hi Farhat,
There is no possibility to exceed the PF numbers on the ConnectX Mellanox adapters (the number of PFs is per host, not per adapter card).
In case of a single-single port adapter, you’ll have only 1x PF.
In case of a dual-port adapter, you’ll have 2x PFs.
Please refer to the driver and firmware release notes for SR-IOV availability details.
The idea beyond SR-IOV is to create virtual-functions in order to share the adapter’s physical interfaces resources.
In latest MLNX_OFED 5.1, Mellanox adapters are capable of exposing up to 127 virtual instances (VFs) for each port in the Mellanox ConnectX family cards.
Best Regards,
Chen
Hi Chen,
Thanks for replying.
Please refer to ConnectX-6 EN Card product brief available on following link
https://www.mellanox.com/sites/default/files/doc-2020/pb-connectx-6-en-card.pdf
On page 3, Sub-section “Hardware-Based I/O Virtualization - Mellanox ASAP”, it is mentioned that SR-IOV: Up to 8 Physical Functions per host.
If number of Physical Functions (PF) are exactly equal to number of Physical Ports, then why a dual-port adapter product brief claims that the card supports upto 8 Physical Functions per host ?
Thanks,
Farhat