The SmartIO module provides support for software enumeration and attaching transparent devices to a running server.

PCIe NTB technology enables software based resource management and enumeration of standard PCIe devices. The process of adding or removing devices can automatic or managed through some basic command line utilities.

The main difference from the traditional setup is that the PCIe host uplink card needs to be replaced with one of Dolphins PCIe NTB cards. The solution works with directly attached PCIe devices as well as PCIe devices installed into PCI Express expansion systems.

The solution does not require any special BIOS version. Hot adding many devices or devices that requires a large PCIe address space may require the BIOS to support 64bit encoding and large PCIe BARs.

Information on use of the Transparent Hot Add functionality can be found at https://docs.dolphinics.com/latest/smartio/nt_transp.html.