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

[Alex Williamson]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2018 18:24:13 -0400
"Taiidan at gmx.com" <Taiidan at gmx.com> wrote:

> 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.

What on Earth you smoking to advise an admitted beginner to run a
POWER9 system or ancient Opteron boards?!  Especially when they're
asking about GPU assignment.  This is just negligent.

Trevor, see vfio.blogspot.com and look for my videos from past KVM
Forums on youtube.  There are plenty of guides, but I can really only
recommend those for "how does this actually work".  An Intel X79 or X99
system will do well.  Ryzen7 systems also work well AIUI, but have some
grouping issues with much of the onboard I/O.  Thanks,

Alex