An apparatus and method is provided for allowing I/O devices to be shared
and/or partitioned among a plurality of processing complexes within the
load/store fabric of each of the processing complexes without requiring
modification to the operating system or driver software of the processing
complexes. The apparatus and method includes a switch for selectively
coupling each of the processing complexes to one or more shared I/O
devices. The apparatus and method further includes placing information
within packets transmitted between the switch and the I/O devices to
identify which of the processing complexes the packets are associated
with. The invention further includes an apparatus and method within the
shared I/O devices to allow the shared I/O devices to service each of the
processing complexes independently.