Intel SR-IOV Driver for Intel® Quick Assist Technology (QAT)

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 Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processor and 5th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processor for Emerald Rapids(EMR) to improve performance and efficiency across the data center. This software enables single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) for the Intel® QAT on VMware ESXi. SR-IOV enables the creation of Virtual Functions (VFs) from a single Intel® QAT 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® QAT Driver 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, and this functionality is the limit to VMware's support. 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.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.3

Resolution

Intel® QuickAssist Technology Driver for VMware ESXi is available on Intel® Download Center:
Intel® QuickAssist Technology Driver for VMware ESXi* - Hardware Version 2.0

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