International Business Machines Corporation
Dynamic assignment of interrupts based on input/output metrics

Abstract:

A system and method dynamically assign interrupts to a virtual machine from an input/output (I/O) adapter based on I/O metrics of the I/O adapter. An interrupt manager monitors I/O adapter traffic flow metrics such as latency of data transfers, usage levels, and transfers per unit of time. The interrupt manager determines when a traffic flow metric for a virtual machine meets a predetermined performance threshold and updates virtual interrupt assignments in a logical interrupt table to improve performance of the system. The interrupt manager uses hint data provided by the device driver to make the interrupt assignments.