The Intel® vRAN Accelerator ACC100 Adapter (PCIe card) provides 4G and 5G Forward Error Correction (FEC) acceleration in virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN). This software enables single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) for this device on VMware ESXi. SR-IOV enables the creation of Virtual Functions (VFs) from a single Physical Function (PF) to support hardware acceleration for multiple guest Virtual Machines (VMs).
Please note this is not a standard ESXi IO kernel driver. It is used with VMDirectPath IO to access the device. VMware's certification of the Intel® vRAN Baseband Driver and Tools verifies basic platform and device requirements for VMDirectPath I/O, checking that the PF driver enables VFs correctly and that the VFs are exposed to the VM's guest operating system. The VMDirectPath I/O certification for SR-IOV test suite does not certify end-to-end functionality of the device. It is Intel's responsibility to support end users with end-to-end interoperability and functionality of the overall solution.
Note:
- Latest vRAN ACC100 software is only compatible with ESXi 8.0 U1 and later versions. Do not install this driver on ESXi 8.0.
- Legacy vRAN ACC100 software needs to be used to have support on ESXi 7.0 (and all 7.x updates) and ESXi 8.0 GA.