Why the latest Intel Arc Pro B50 firmware shows 2 SR-IOV VFs instead of higher VF counts

Some users may notice that Intel Arc Pro B50 exposes 2 SR-IOV Virtual Functions instead of a higher number. On supported Ubuntu Linux configurations, this is the expected default setup for Arc Pro B50.

Intel enabled official SR-IOV support for Arc Pro beginning with graphics firmware version BMG__21,1162, delivered in driver 32.0.101.8306 (Q4.25). With that support, the default configuration for Arc Pro B50 was set to 2 VFs, each with an 8 GB VF Local Memory BAR.

This default configuration was selected to provide sufficient compute resources, memory capacity, and bandwidth for each VF. The goal is to deliver a consistent user experience, predictable performance, and quality of service, especially for demanding workloads such as AI inference and large language model (LLM) applications.

No corrective action is required if Arc Pro B50 shows 2 VFs under the supported default configuration.

Important details:

• 2 VFs is the default and expected configuration on Intel Arc Pro B50.

• Each VF is configured by default with an 8 GB VF Local Memory BAR.

• This setup helps ensure that each VF has enough compute, memory, and bandwidth resources for stable operation.

In practice, the number of available VFs depends on how local memory resources are divided. Larger memory allocation per VF reduces the maximum number of VFs that can be created.

Changing the maximum VF count or the default VF Local Memory BAR size requires changes at the IFWI level.

There is currently no public official tool available to modify those settings.

For that reason, customers using the public supported software stack should expect the default Arc Pro B50 behavior to remain 2 VFs with 8 GB VF BAR size per VF.