Virtual accelerators in a virtualized computing system

A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions to be executed in a computing device to cause the computing device to carry out a method of virtualizing a hardware accelerator in a host cluster of a virtualized computing system, comprising:

• commanding, at an initiator host in the host cluster, a programmable expansion bus device to reconfigure as a virtual accelerator based on specifications of a hardware accelerator in a target host of the host cluster;
• executing, in the programmable expansion bus device, software to emulate the virtual accelerator as connected to an expansion bus of the initiator host;
• receiving, at the programmable expansion bus device, compute tasks from an application executing in the initiator host;
• and
• sending, to the target host, the compute tasks for processing by the hardware accelerator.

A host computer, comprising:

• a hardware platform configured to execute an application having compute tasks;
• a programmable expansion bus device in the hardware platform, the programmable expansion bus device configured to:
• reconfigure as a virtual accelerator based on specifications of a hardware accelerator in a target host in network communication with the host computer;
• execute software to emulate the virtual accelerator as connected to an expansion bus of the hardware platform;
• receive the compute tasks from the application;
• and
• send, to the target host, the compute tasks for processing by the hardware accelerator.