Intel® QuickAssist Technology Driver for VMware ESXi with Enhanced DirectPath I/O – Hardware Version 2.0

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Intel® QuickAssist Technology (Intel® QAT) is PCIe device that provides cryptographic and compression acceleration. It is a hardware accelerator integrated into the 4th Generation (formerly Sapphire Rapids) and 5th Generation (formerly Emerald Rapids) Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors to improve performance and efficiency across the data center. This software enables Intel® QAT accelerator on VMware ESXi via Enhanced DirectPath I/O. Driver enables sharing of a Physical Function across multiple guest Virtual Machines (VM) using Intel® Scalable I/O Virtualization technology. This is accomplished by exposing Intel® QAT accelerator Assignable Device Interfaces as Virtual Devices to a specific guest VM(s).

Please note this is not a standard ESXi I/O kernel driver. It is used with Enhanced DirectPath I/O to access the device. VMware's certification of the Intel® QAT Driver verifies basic platform and device requirements for Enhanced DirectPath I/O, checking that the driver enables VDEVs correctly and that the VDEVs are exposed to the VM's guest operating system. The Enhanced DirectPath I/O certification 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:

• QAT 2.0 is only available with Sapphire Rapids and Emerald Rapids CPUs support.
• QAT 2.0 is only compatible with ESXi 8.0 U2 and later versions.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.2

Resolution

Intel® QuickAssist Technology Driver for VMware ESXi is available on Intel® Download Center: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/761741.

Customer Support

To submit an Intel® Premier Support (IPS) ticket, please go to https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/secure/my-intel/dashboard.html