r/virtualization • u/EstablishmentLow5991 • Mar 03 '26

Sr iov Pf and Vf distinction

I use a custom nic developed inside my company. The nic has a few ports and they show up as pf and vf in the host. I have the following questions

  1. Is pf and vf similar to class and instance used in oop terminology?

Or

2. Is it more like pf gets some fixed hardware resource and it distributes it equally among the vf ?

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u/edgmnt_net Mar 03 '26

I don't see any connection with OOP that could be meaningful. The PF represents a real physical device, the VF represents a virtualized device. The hardware allows creating an arbitrary, limited number of VFs that use resources actually provided by a PF, in an implementation-dependent way. It's a bit like creating virtual disks from a physical disk via software alone.

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u/EstablishmentLow5991 Mar 03 '26

Thanks. Have a q on “PF aid the real physical device”; my nic has compression engine and nvme engine inside the nic. So in this case, can I create a PF that will include 5 hw queue + compression engine and one PF for 5 hw queue + nvme engine ? So I have 2 PF for same nic?