The Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) specification is a standard for a type of PCI device assignment that can share a single device with multiple pods.
SR-IOV enables you to segment a compliant network device, recognized on the host node as a physical function (PF), into multiple virtual functions (VFs), and make them available for direct IO to the POD.
Network Interface Cards (NICs) with SR-IOV capabilities are managed through physical functions (PFs) and virtual functions (VFs). A PF is used by the host and usually represents a single NIC port. VF configurations are applied through the PF. With SR-IOV CNI each VF can be treated as a separate network interface, assigned to a container, and configured with it's own MAC, VLAN, IP and more.
SR-IOV CNI plugin works with SR-IOV device plugin for VF allocation in Kubernetes. A metaplugin such as Multus gets the allocated VF's deviceID(PCI address) and is responsible for invoking the SR-IOV CNI plugin with that deviceID.
The end result will be similar to the in the picture except for the SRIOV-CNI and the DPDK userspace.
Reference:
https://github.com/ramanujadasu/sriov-cni
https://dramasamy.medium.com/high-performance-containerized-applications-in-kubernetes-f494cef3f8e8
