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Intel's Current IAA & DSA Accelerators Aren't Safe For VMs Due To A Security Issue


With the Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator (IAA) and Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA) introduced first with Xeon Scalable 'Sapphire Rapids' processors, they can be a big performance win for some workloads but can be a pain to setup and with limited software support

What the Linux kernel ended up doing was a mitigation of adding the Sapphire Rapids DSA and IAA accelerators to the VFIO deny list. Hitting the Linux kernel mailing list last night was a new patch series reaffirming that current IAA and DSA accelerators are not safe to assign to virtual machines. That patch series cover letter from last night notes:"Due to a potential security issue, it's not safe to assign legacy DSA/IAA devices to virtual machines.

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