US Patent 7836211 Shared input/output load-store architecture

An apparatus and method are provided that enable I/O devices to be shared and/or partitioned among a plurality of operating system domains within the load-store fabric of each of the operating system domains without requiring modification to the operating system or driver software of the operating system domains. The apparatus includes sharing logic and a first shared input/output (I/O) endpoint. The sharing logic is coupled to a plurality of operating system domains through a load-store fabric. The sharing logic routes transactions between the plurality of operating system domains. The first shared input/output (I/O) endpoint is coupled to the sharing logic. The first shared I/O endpoint requests/completes the transactions for the each of said plurality of operating system domains according to a variant of a protocol that encapsulates an OS domain header within a transaction layer packet.