Hi Stephen,
Thank you for your reminder.
Our NIC supports VFIO no-iommu mode.
Given that the igb_uio driver is deprecated and has known issues, we do not
plan to support PF with igb_uio.
Therefore, I will modify the patch to remove the igb_uio related code and
simply add a note to the documentation.
------------------------------------------------------------------
发件人：Stephen Hemminger <[email protected]>
发送时间：2026年2月26日(周四) 00:50
收件人：Dimon<[email protected]>
抄 送：dev<[email protected]>; Kyo Liu<[email protected]>;
Leon<[email protected]>; Sam<[email protected]>
主 题：Re: [PATCH v3 1/1] net/nbl: add igb uio support for NBL VF devices
On Tue, 24 Feb 2026 19:39:42 -0800
Dimon Zhao <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]>
> ---
> doc/guides/nics/nbl.rst | 11 ++++
> doc/guides/rel_notes/release_26_03.rst | 4 ++
> drivers/net/nbl/nbl_core.c | 2 +
> drivers/net/nbl/nbl_dev/nbl_dev.c | 33 ++++++++++--
> drivers/net/nbl/nbl_dev/nbl_dev.h | 3 ++
> drivers/net/nbl/nbl_dispatch.c | 50 +++++++++++++++++++
> drivers/net/nbl/nbl_ethdev.c | 13 +++++
> .../nbl_hw/nbl_hw_leonis/nbl_hw_leonis_snic.c | 12 +++++
> .../nbl_hw/nbl_hw_leonis/nbl_hw_leonis_snic.h | 9 ++++
> .../nbl/nbl_hw/nbl_hw_leonis/nbl_res_leonis.c | 10 ++++
> drivers/net/nbl/nbl_include/nbl_def_channel.h | 5 ++
> .../net/nbl/nbl_include/nbl_def_dispatch.h | 3 ++
> drivers/net/nbl/nbl_include/nbl_def_hw.h | 3 ++
> .../net/nbl/nbl_include/nbl_def_resource.h | 3 ++
> 14 files changed, 157 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/doc/guides/nics/nbl.rst b/doc/guides/nics/nbl.rst
> index ba0a119dfd..c74826a3c2 100644
> --- a/doc/guides/nics/nbl.rst
> +++ b/doc/guides/nics/nbl.rst
> @@ -101,3 +101,14 @@ Limitations or Known Issues
> 32-bit architectures are not supported.
>
> Windows and BSD are not supported yet.
> +
> +**igb_uio Driver Support**
> +
> +Due to chip design limitations, only the VF supports the ``igb_uio`` driver,
> +PF does not support this driver.
> +
> +**uio_pci_generic Driver Support**
> +
> +The ``uio_pci_generic`` driver is not supported on either PF or VF devices.
> +This is because the NBL PMD requires MSI-X interrupts to receive mailbox
> +messages, but the ``uio_pci_generic`` driver does not support MSI-X
> interrupts.
The igb_uio driver is deprecated at this point, it is not upstream and has
lots of issues. Can VFIO be used in no IOMMU mode for this instead?
