Patent ID: 7644219

Claim:
A method for initializing PCI devices communicatively coupled to a bridge device in an information handling system that includes multiple operating system instances, comprising: resetting the information handling system; identifying the operating system instance that is the first to access the bridge device and granting ownership of the bridge device to the identified operating system instance; permitting the operating system instance that is the first to access the bridge device the authority to initialize each of the PCI devices; assigning each operating system instance of the information handling system to at least one context in at least one of the PCI devices; wherein assigning an operating system instance to at least one context in at least one of the PCI devices comprises allocating a unique programming environment to the operating system instance within the at least one of the PCI devices; releasing ownership by the identified operating system instance of the bridge device; and causing a configuration event for each context of each PCI device to cause each operating system instance to detect each PCI device assigned to the operating system.