The True Potential of SR-IOV: Unlocking Seamless Virtualization for Consumers

All SR-IOV really is, as some might argue, technology that allows businesses to buy expensive graphics cards and share them among multiple people. This may seem like a niche application at first glance, but bear with me as we delve deeper into the world of virtualization and its potential impact on consumers.

In an architecture firm setting, for instance, you might have a team of 50 or 100 architects working together to design buildings. While some of them may need a lot of computational horsepower, others might only require a fraction of that power for tasks like plugging in numbers. This is where Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) comes in – a technology that allows companies to create virtual servers with SR-IOV, sharing a single graphics card among multiple users. This setup can be incredibly cost-effective and efficient, especially when compared to purchasing individual graphics cards for each user.

Now, let's talk about the relationship between SR-IOV and gaming. It might seem like a stretch at first, but hear me out. When it comes to running older games or emulating them on modern systems, there are several challenges to overcome. For example, many older games rely heavily on specific hardware APIs that are tied to particular graphics cards. As new drivers are released for those GPUs, compatibility becomes an issue – the oldest cards may no longer be supported. SR-IOV promises to change this by allowing consumers to share their graphics card between different operating systems.

Imagine being able to run a Windows 95 game on your current system, with full hardware emulation and none of the compatibility issues that come with using older drivers. This is precisely what SR-IOV can offer, thanks to its ability to create a virtualized environment where the host machine can access the graphics card as if it were a physical one. And this isn't just limited to gaming – with SR-IOV and Looking Glass technology, you could run any operating system on your system, without worrying about compatibility or hardware restrictions.

Looking Glass, in particular, is an exciting development that enables the copying of information from the virtual graphics card to the host machine's real-world graphics card. This means that consumers can enjoy seamless performance, even when running games or applications that require intense graphics processing. And as consumer GPUs begin to support SR-IOV, we'll see Looking Glass technology integrated into these systems, creating a seamless experience for users.

The implications of SR-IOV and Looking Glass are far-reaching, with the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with our computers. By allowing consumers to choose between operating systems without worrying about hardware restrictions, SR-IOV opens up new possibilities for gamers, developers, and even businesses. No longer will you be tied to a particular ecosystem or forced into using software that doesn't meet your needs. With SR-IOV and Looking Glass on the horizon, it's clear that virtualization is poised to take center stage in the world of computing.

As I sit here in Vancouver, surrounded by tech enthusiasts and fellow adventurers, I'm excited to see where this journey will take us. Will we finally see the dawn of the Linux desktop? Can SR-IOV truly bring about a new era of flexibility and freedom for consumers? These are the questions that keep me up at night, and ones that I'm eager to explore further in the days ahead. Until next time, when you can find me signing off from the Level 1 forums – may your graphics card be forever free!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso I find myself in Vancouver Vancouver Canada British Columbia Canada because first one bees on thing these crazy countries I don't even know it's our IV why on earth what I say that's our IV and Looking Glass is the future of gaming future of gaming on Linux or the future of platforms are cool yeah it's what is it sr io v forget linux let's talk about sr io v all sr io v really is is technology that lets businesses buy really expensive graphics cards and share them among multiple people so inside a server inside a company there or there might be a farm of servers that have you know 8 or 16 graphics cards for you know 50 or 100 people imagine like an architecture firm but a bunch of architects that are working on you know NVIDIA grid or just doing architecture firm stuff designing buildings and sometimes they need a lot of horsepower but sometimes they're just plugging in numbers and so which person needs just a crazy amount of computational horsepower when it comes to graphics changes a little bit and so you can have something called virtual desktop infrastructure or VDI infrastructure and if your users aren't oversubscribed like I actually have a really good experience with VDI although most people that are experiencing VDI on the enterprise right now are kind of post in the comments to be like in our video is garbage that's cool you know the company can squeeze an extra dime out of it as a sort of thing that sr ilv is a technology that it's like virtualization technology where you have one server that can run a bunch of virtual servers with sr io v you can have one graphics card that's shared among a whole bunch of users so what what the hell does that have to do with gaming and Linux it's like ok we're not so I'll talk about Linux yet it's not about good old games what's the deal with good old games I mean they packaged older games inside rappers maybe an API wrapper it may be an emulator since you can run an okay and think like an older Windows 95 game you know are they packaging for the full windows 95 no it's just an API wrapper or something like that and so you can run older software even though it's incompatible with modern systems well think about modern systems think about how complicated like hair works is and how like the Nvidia API is tied to certain hardware and every time we get new driver updates from Nvidia or AMD the very oldest cards are broken and any the very oldest cards sort of stop being supported all of that sort of goes away if you can do full hardware emulation all of that becomes a software construct and so SSR iov means that for the gamer you could share your graphics card between two different operating systems so like Windows 95 and you know Windows whatever the current version is to share a single graphics card but it's also useful for people like me that are into Linux is their main operating system because I could still run windows and games and things like that with full hardware pass-through with CPU virtualization there's not really a lot of hardware overhead with virtualization you can run a virtual machine but nearly the native performance of just running it on bare metal versus inside the virtual machine 1sr iov promises the same thing a card that is capable of SR io v can run at near-native performance like as if it's running on a full graphics card now Looking Glass looking glasses are really awesome technology for copying what's being displayed on one graphics card to another you go to SR io v you've got one physical graphics card but it might show up as eight graphics cards to the systems it doesn't have eight physical connectors there's got to be a way to copy the information off of that SR io v graphics card to the host graphics card and that's all that looking-glass does that's that's what the looking-glass part of this equation is so that as soon as consumer GPUs support SR io v will be right there with lookingglass and technologies like Looking Glass maybe not looking glass by name even but looking glass type technologies to copy that frame buffer from the virtual graphics card that's tied to real hardware the host machine so that she can play older games or maybe even current games at full speed without really sacrificing anything no matter what operating system you run whether your Mac or Windows or Linux or some other operating system that hasn't been invented yet or even BSD you could run all of them you can run none of them you could run one of them and emulate the others it is a perfect capitalistic construct because every operating system can compete on its merits you are not married to an ecosystem you are not married to Windows because that's where all your stuff is you're not married to Linux because my freedoms or whatever SR iov I think it's the future and I think a lookingglass and SR iov or where virtualization will be on the desktop for consumers sooner rather than later hell's sr io v might bring about the year of the Linux desktop finally because there would be nothing keeping you on Windows at that point I'm Windell I'm driving around Vancouver and hanging out at the peared doing other fun stuff so if you want to ask questions or troll me or whatever you can find me in the level 1 forums signing out and i'll see you thereso I find myself in Vancouver Vancouver Canada British Columbia Canada because first one bees on thing these crazy countries I don't even know it's our IV why on earth what I say that's our IV and Looking Glass is the future of gaming future of gaming on Linux or the future of platforms are cool yeah it's what is it sr io v forget linux let's talk about sr io v all sr io v really is is technology that lets businesses buy really expensive graphics cards and share them among multiple people so inside a server inside a company there or there might be a farm of servers that have you know 8 or 16 graphics cards for you know 50 or 100 people imagine like an architecture firm but a bunch of architects that are working on you know NVIDIA grid or just doing architecture firm stuff designing buildings and sometimes they need a lot of horsepower but sometimes they're just plugging in numbers and so which person needs just a crazy amount of computational horsepower when it comes to graphics changes a little bit and so you can have something called virtual desktop infrastructure or VDI infrastructure and if your users aren't oversubscribed like I actually have a really good experience with VDI although most people that are experiencing VDI on the enterprise right now are kind of post in the comments to be like in our video is garbage that's cool you know the company can squeeze an extra dime out of it as a sort of thing that sr ilv is a technology that it's like virtualization technology where you have one server that can run a bunch of virtual servers with sr io v you can have one graphics card that's shared among a whole bunch of users so what what the hell does that have to do with gaming and Linux it's like ok we're not so I'll talk about Linux yet it's not about good old games what's the deal with good old games I mean they packaged older games inside rappers maybe an API wrapper it may be an emulator since you can run an okay and think like an older Windows 95 game you know are they packaging for the full windows 95 no it's just an API wrapper or something like that and so you can run older software even though it's incompatible with modern systems well think about modern systems think about how complicated like hair works is and how like the Nvidia API is tied to certain hardware and every time we get new driver updates from Nvidia or AMD the very oldest cards are broken and any the very oldest cards sort of stop being supported all of that sort of goes away if you can do full hardware emulation all of that becomes a software construct and so SSR iov means that for the gamer you could share your graphics card between two different operating systems so like Windows 95 and you know Windows whatever the current version is to share a single graphics card but it's also useful for people like me that are into Linux is their main operating system because I could still run windows and games and things like that with full hardware pass-through with CPU virtualization there's not really a lot of hardware overhead with virtualization you can run a virtual machine but nearly the native performance of just running it on bare metal versus inside the virtual machine 1sr iov promises the same thing a card that is capable of SR io v can run at near-native performance like as if it's running on a full graphics card now Looking Glass looking glasses are really awesome technology for copying what's being displayed on one graphics card to another you go to SR io v you've got one physical graphics card but it might show up as eight graphics cards to the systems it doesn't have eight physical connectors there's got to be a way to copy the information off of that SR io v graphics card to the host graphics card and that's all that looking-glass does that's that's what the looking-glass part of this equation is so that as soon as consumer GPUs support SR io v will be right there with lookingglass and technologies like Looking Glass maybe not looking glass by name even but looking glass type technologies to copy that frame buffer from the virtual graphics card that's tied to real hardware the host machine so that she can play older games or maybe even current games at full speed without really sacrificing anything no matter what operating system you run whether your Mac or Windows or Linux or some other operating system that hasn't been invented yet or even BSD you could run all of them you can run none of them you could run one of them and emulate the others it is a perfect capitalistic construct because every operating system can compete on its merits you are not married to an ecosystem you are not married to Windows because that's where all your stuff is you're not married to Linux because my freedoms or whatever SR iov I think it's the future and I think a lookingglass and SR iov or where virtualization will be on the desktop for consumers sooner rather than later hell's sr io v might bring about the year of the Linux desktop finally because there would be nothing keeping you on Windows at that point I'm Windell I'm driving around Vancouver and hanging out at the peared doing other fun stuff so if you want to ask questions or troll me or whatever you can find me in the level 1 forums signing out and i'll see you there\n"