I’m quietly hoping they will backport the functionality on the xe driver to alchemist, but agree looking less likely.
If I have to buy a b60 then so be it, but I’d like to keep this a770 in use for a while longer, it is a good little card.
One thing I’ve not seen is if the b50 card also supports sr-iov, if so that would open up some fun options for low power systems
Exciting times though… any excuse for a new build
I do happen to have a Flex 170 or two, but there’s no way I’m getting what you guys need without clipping, is there?
Intel open source SR-IOV and I there next customer…
I’m sure competition will open AMD and nvidia. I will remember but if it happens
If we’re after the entire ROM image, the most reliable way would be to desolder ROM chip off the board. Don’t know if there are other ways like debug header or something similar on Flex 170.
I hope @Forge sees your post and comes up with a better solution though, maybe there is no need to dump entire ROM, only a region of it.
Desolder? It seems I wouldn’t even have to take the backplate off.
Pretty sure this is where all firmware lives. You just clip one of these things on it:
I am not sure that reflashing whatever’s in here on an A770 would get you to where you want to be though, unless everything about the card is in NVRAM. I’m thinking of things like the PCI vendor/product code, which is probably fused in the ASIC.
But then again, I have no idea, which is why I was asking what you guys needed.
Instead of desoldering look for a clip like this:
Just make sure it’s the right size.
Single slot, low profile would be great, but I don’t have high hopes.
I think vendor and product code would not suffice. DeviceID seems to be 56C0 for Flex170 and 56A0 for A770, but I don’t think that’s the hard part.
I tried quick and dirty trick by text-searching for DEV_ID in SR-IOV-enabled drivers from Intel repository, repaced 56C0 for 56A0 in i915_pciids.h (and some other places I don’t remember) and tried to install that. It installs but device variables that control VFs did not appear, therefore commands to enable and manage VFs obviously did nothing. I did not have more time to investigate and stopped there.
So either I was doing something wrong, or there’s more to it and some part in firmware that accepts commands for enabling VFs in Flex FW is missing in A770 FW. That’s why I believe FW dump would be a good starting point, but not necessarily the only one.
This chip on your first photo does appear to be the flash chip with firmware, and trying reading it would be nice indeed. At the same time I don’t really trust the clips referenced in Mandaril’s post, had mixed results with those – e.g. borrowed a clip once, tried to dump BIOS from a motheboard and received 3 bit-different results in 3 reads. Maybe I had bad luck with mine.
I’ll take a crack at it over the weekend. Apologies but a fair bit of stuff piled up this week.
sr-iov coming for battlemage. You can all thank me, I bought an alchemist card last week 
Does that mean we might have SR-IOV on the B580?!?
Yeah, that’s exactly what it means.
There may be userland work that needs to be done to make it work, but at least the kernel will support it.
Ill believe it when i see it. The key question is whether it relies on hardware only in B series or if they will open the door to consumer alchemist wih a new driver.
Either way it is promising.
If only you could get the card at MSRP
MicroCenter has them once in a while. Newegg as well. If SR-IOV happens then super worth it imho.
You must have forgotten what year it is, huh?
MSRP means Manufacturer Suggested Revenue Proportion in 2025.
Manufacturers special release price
So pretty much a thing for 2026+ for server stuff.
Releasing SR-IOV more or less with the B50/B60 probably isn’t coincidental. I’m certainly following B50 release because I want one or two in 2026. It’s all coming together in late 2025 and 2026 \o/
MSRP in the US is mostly to get people excited by the low price. And I think Intel just doesn’t make money on them, so supply is limited, increasing margins in the process.
Competition is just great…3 is more than 2. Let’s keep the 3rd one and encourage a 4th one.
Eventually Intel will just do AMD+Nvidia things (remember quad-core decade-long stagnation?).
But we can all profit for the time being from Intel being desperate to get market share and get established
In the EU B580s are well available at €269. (close to a $250 MSRP if you the euro is about 1.17 dollars but the EU has around 20% sales tax). You have more of a taxation and trade issue going on, I suspect.
As far as I’ve experimented with SR-IOV usually you put the number of virtual functions you want in a kernel parameter and then you get the PCIe devices to pass through to a VM, so I’m not sure what kind of userland work would be required?
The Kernel has been released! Has anyone tried SR-IOV?
