[PATCH v3 1/1] net/nbl: add igb uio support for NBL VF devices

Stephen Hemminger stephen at networkplumber.org
Thu Feb 26 21:14:26 CET 2026


On Tue, 24 Feb 2026 19:39:42 -0800
Dimon Zhao <dimon.zhao at nebula-matrix.com> wrote:

> Due to a chip design limitation, only the VF
> supports the igb_uio driver. The PF does not.
> 
> The igb_uio driver requires allocating interrupts and configuring the
> PCIe MSI-X table before the driver's probe function is called.
> This pre-probe configuration is only possible on the VF due to the
> hardware limitation; the PF can only configure the MSI-X table during
> its probe process.
> 
> Therefore, using igb_uio on the PF will fail.
> This commit clarifies this restriction.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Dimon Zhao <dimon.zhao at nebula-matrix.com>

The documentation doesn't make it clear that nbl_core is for PF
and igb_uio or vfio-pci should be used for VF.

Is the VF and PF sharing same ops structure?

Also, there should be a entry like this now:
RTE_PMD_REGISTER_KMOD_DEP(net_nbl_vf, "* igb_uio | vfio-pci");


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