Virtual accelerators

7.1 LPAR mode z/VM guest

Each physical accelerator card can provide up to 15 virtual cards. In PCIe terminology, these virtual cards are called virtual functions.

GenWQE accelerator cards, as detected by Linux® on IBM® Z, are virtual cards. Which and how many cards are available to a particular Linux instance depends on the mainframe configuration and, if applicable, the hypervisor configuration.

As for most mainframe devices, availability can be enhanced by assigning virtual accelerator cards from different physical cards.

A degree of load distribution can be achieved by unevenly distributing accelerator cards among different Linux instances.