Authenticating shared interconnect fabrics

A method of authenticating access to shared peripheral devices on a switched interconnection fabric, the method comprising:

• associating at least one permitted requester identifier with a physical function of a device on the switched fabric;
• instantiating a virtual function of the device based on the physical function, the virtual function inheriting the associated at least one permitted requester identifier;
• receiving a memory-mapped input/output (MMIO) request at the virtual function;
• comparing, at the virtual function, a requester identifier of the MMIO request with the at least one permitted requester identifier of the virtual function;
• if the requester identifier of the MMIO request matches the at least one permitted requester identifier of the virtual function:
• accepting, by the virtual function, the MMIO request, and
• allowing, by the virtual function, the accepted MMIO request to access a memory address space allocated to a host corresponding to the request identifier;
• and
• if the request identifier of the MMIO request does not match the at least one permitted requester identifier of the virtual function, denying, by the virtual function, access to the memory address space to the MMIO request.