US Patent 7260664 Interrupt mechanism on an IO adapter that supports virtualization

A mechanism for handling event notifications or interrupts in a logically partitioned computing system having IO adapters that support adapter virtualization are provided. A virtual adapter associated with a physical IO adapter detects an event, identifies a logical partition associated with the event, and writes an event notification entry in a partition interrupt control block (PICB) of the logical partition memory space. The virtual adapter notifies shared control point logic on the physical IO adapter of the update to the PICB which may then write an entry to a logical partition manager interrupt control block (LPAR manager ICB) identifying the update to the PICB and the operating system associated with the PICB. The LPAR manager may then inform the operating system of the logical partition of the updates to the PICB which may then read the entries in the PICB, process them and inform appropriate application instances of the events.