Intel + Microsoft Contribute "SIOV" I/O Virtualization Spec To Open Compute Project

Intel announced yesterday that they in cooperation with Microsoft have contributed the Scalable I/O Virtualization (SIOV) specification to the Open Compute Project for being an open standard moving forward.

The Scalable I/O Virtualization specification is designed to be a "scalable and flexible approach to hardware-assisted I/O virtualization" and builds atop PCI Express and Compute Express Link (CXL).

Intel's announcement from Tuesday sums it up as:

SIOV architecture will enable data center operators to deliver more cost-effective access to high-performance accelerators and other key I/O devices for their customers, as well as relieve I/O device manufacturers of cost and programming burdens imposed under previous standards.

The new SIOV specification is a modernized hardware and software architecture that enables efficient, mass-scale virtualization of I/O devices, and overcomes the scaling limitations of prior I/O virtualization technologies. Under the terms of the OCP contribution, any company can adopt SIOV technology and incorporate it into their products under an open, zero-cost license.

In cloud environments, I/O devices including network adaptors, GPUs and storage controllers are shared among many virtualized workloads requiring their services. Hardware-assisted I/O virtualization technologies enable efficient routing of I/O traffic from the workloads through the virtualization software stack to the devices. It helps keep overhead low and performance close to “bare-metal” speeds.

The spec is now part of the Open Compute Project (OCP) initiative and those interested in all the technical details behind SIOV can see the public SIOV spec document.

Scalable I/O Virtualization has been donated by Intel and Microsoft to the OCP project.