Patent ID: 8464260

Claim:
A device, comprising: an interconnect interface; a plurality of functions; and processing logic, coupled to the interconnect interface, that provides access to the plurality of functions of the device through the interconnect interface; wherein a first transaction request received by the device, and associated with configuring a function of the plurality of functions, causes a request identifier stored within the first transaction request to be assigned to the function of the plurality of functions of the device, but not to the device as a whole; wherein the function is a supervisor function accessible only by a privileged software, and wherein if the first transaction request is received after either a device level or a function level reset, and is further received before any other transaction requests after the reset, the request identifier of the first transaction request is assigned to the supervisory function; and wherein access to the function, but not to the device as a whole, is denied if a request identifier stored within a second transaction request, received subsequent to the first transaction request, does not match the request identifier assigned to the function.