Intel 82576 and I350 SR-IOV Virtual Function Ethernet
Guest-side support for the virtual-function half of Intel's server gigabit Ethernet controllers: the 82576 (shipped from 2008, now discontinued) and the I350 (still sold in 2025). It lets a VM drive a slice of one of these NICs directly via SR-IOV.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as a legacy-leaning, niche driver. The 82576 half is end-of-life at Intel, and although the I350 is still on sale with discontinuance projected for 2031, gigabit SR-IOV is no longer a mainstream deployment pattern. Upstream still accepts real fixes — a PCI reset change landed in 2023 and another targeted fix in October 2025 — so it is actively maintained, not a removal candidate, just serving older virtualization guests and embedded use cases rather than new builds.</recommendation_summary> </invoke>
repository signals
sources
- cateee.net
LKDDb maps igbvf to PCI IDs 8086:10ca (82576 VF) and 8086:1520 (I350 VF), confirming the driver covers only legacy Intel SR-IOV virtual-function NICs and is still present in current kernel series.
- intel.com
Intel ARK marks the 82576 controller family as Discontinued, so one of the two hardware families behind igbvf is firmly legacy.
- intel.com
Intel ARK lists I350-AM4 as Launched with expected discontinuance in 1H'31 and SR-IOV capability, supporting that at least part of igbvf's hardware base was still sold new in 2025.
- git.kernel.org
A non-treewide igbvf-specific fix landed on 2025-10-29, showing upstream still accepts maintenance patches for this driver.
- git.kernel.org
A substantive igbvf PCI reset support change landed in 2023, indicating real upkeep rather than a fully abandoned driver.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local source inspection via shell (`rg`, `sed`) showed igbvf only binds 82576 VF and I350 VF PCI IDs. Upstream activity was checked with shell `git log` because lore MCP/lei were unavailable in this environment; the two git.kernel.org commit URLs were then formed from those commit IDs using canonical recall of stable kernel commit URLs. Deployment judgement is an inference from the cited hardware mix: 82576 is discontinued, but I350 remains sold and SR-IOV-capable, so igbvf still matters mainly for legacy/embedded virtualization guests rather than broad new deployments. No concrete removal-series evidence was found in the available public searches, so active maintenance argues against deprecation/removal; annotate it as legacy/niche instead.