[vfio-users] Best guides on vfio and related info

[Taiidan at gmx.com]

On 03/15/2018 01:52 PM, Trevor Rose wrote:

> are there any guides to avoiding pitfalls in hardware selection?
Most hardware that claims to support IOMMU actually doesn't or has bad 
ACS grouping so check with others who have the same revision before you buy.
I bought two disappointing boards before buying some that support open 
source firmware.

There are options for libre firmware computers at various price points 
and performance levels such as the OpenPOWER9 TALOS 2 (max 48 cores with 
4 threads per core - very fast high end server/workstation hardware with 
PCI-e 4.0, CAPI etc) there is also the KGPE-D16 (max 32 cores, 192GB 
RAM) and KCMA-D8 (16 cores, 128GB) all of these also have OpenBMC for 
secure remote management (the talos has the better IBM OpenBMC with more 
features vs the D8/D16's facebook OpenBMC)

If you don't have the cash for a TALOS 2 ($2.5K for board+cpu) I suggest 
a KGPE-D16, while it is not the latest and fastest you can make a nice 
virt server for cheap as they're selling used 16 core CPU's for around 
$50-100 on ebay (the boards MSRP is $415). I play new games at max 
settings in a VM on mine and it supports crossfire.