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LibVF.IO: Add support for GPU Virtual Machine (GVM)

arccompute.com

31–40 of 57 posts

Re: LibVF.IO: Add support for GPU Virtual Machine (GVM)

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about one GPU with multiple VM? Annoying t hing right now is that you have to pony up for the fancy nvidia cards plus insane nvidia licensing for their multiGPU virtualized cards. AMD at least makes you only pay for the hardware but its still super pricey.

Ya, you can use multiple VMs. Here is a video I took of a laptop with LibVF.IO and an early pre-release version of GVM installed - at the start of the video you can see a fullscreen Windows VM and then I back out and open another compartmentalized 'app VM' (browser): https://streamable.com/gd45bh Both VMs are actually based on Windows (one simply doesn't have explorer.exe running) and each has it's own virtual GPU at…

Sounds very interesting! Do VMs work with a display session (Xorg) too?

Some GPU-enabled applications require an X server with a physical HDMI/Displayport attached.

Re: LibVF.IO: Add support for GPU Virtual Machine (GVM)

#32
I run Linux for software development, but I need to also run Autodesk Fusion 360, which doesn't run on Linux. So I run it in a VirtualBox virtual machine. It works poorly as it sometimes doesn't render correctly and the performance is bad. I know that if I did some research and bought a second GPU that I could maybe get PCI-passthrough working, but I find that obnoxious and wasteful.

Can I use LibVF.IO/GVM to get better performance (and perhaps proper rendering) on a VM in Linux? Or is there a different solution I should be looking into?

Re: LibVF.IO: Add support for GPU Virtual Machine (GVM)

#33
post #7

This is pretty cool, one of the killer features that windows has had with Hyper-V that is really creaming QEMU/KVM. You could probably try getting some support from a vendor like Red Hat, as something like this in the Linux Kernel is a huge datacenter/cloud hosting feature that directly impacts their bottom line.

I would love to work with folks like the people at RedHat! We're working on some new tools in C (GPLv2) which we think will make it easier to work with existing kernel/driver maintainers. We'll announce some of those things early next month and right after we'll be at QubesOS Summit & KVM Forum. I hope we get the opportunity to talk to some of the RedHat folks! :)

Do you have a contact where Red Hat people can reach you? (Not in the VM/Graphics space, but I can try to reach out to the right people.)

Re: LibVF.IO: Add support for GPU Virtual Machine (GVM)

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately there is limited support on AMD. I would like to try to make it better though! https://openmdev.io/index.php/GPU_Support

What's one of the biggest things AMD could go to help you turn this into a reality? Just... documentation? Source code examples? Which... I'm assuming they'll never do?

If they would consider helping with the things I mention here we'd do our best to support them!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32585950

Re: LibVF.IO: Add support for GPU Virtual Machine (GVM)

#35
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my use I tend to run a high performing Windows VM (very good with most games and other GPU accelerated programs - even chrome/adobe these days uses the GPU) inside Linux. This can also be used for various high assurance use cases such as OpenXT / QubesOS (security by compartmentalization). For example a laptop computer being used by an automotive company for CAD to keep their information safe from other programs…

This is beautiful, you're doing the Lord's work. I absolutely loathe the current situation of MAC security being so complicated on desktops combined with graphical performance issues in compartmentalization. And surely a lot of folks are also stuck on a certain OS because GPU performance in VMs is terrible. This is very much needed.

Thanks!! We'll do our best to keep improving things for everyone. Hopefully security by compartmentalization folks benefit from our work as well. I'll be going to QubesOS Summit so hopefully there will be more good conversations there. :)

Re: LibVF.IO: Add support for GPU Virtual Machine (GVM)

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to work with folks like the people at RedHat! We're working on some new tools in C (GPLv2) which we think will make it easier to work with existing kernel/driver maintainers. We'll announce some of those things early next month and right after we'll be at QubesOS Summit & KVM Forum. I hope we get the opportunity to talk to some of the RedHat folks! :)

Do you have a contact where Red Hat people can reach you? (Not in the VM/Graphics space, but I can try to reach out to the right people.)

For sure! They can reach me at arthur@arccompute.io

I'll also be attending KVM Forum this year so I'd love to chat with folks there as well! :)

Re: LibVF.IO: Add support for GPU Virtual Machine (GVM)

#38

I run Linux for software development, but I need to also run Autodesk Fusion 360, which doesn't run on Linux. So I run it in a VirtualBox virtual machine. It works poorly as it sometimes doesn't render correctly and the performance is bad. I know that if I did some research and bought a second GPU that I could maybe get PCI-passthrough working, but I find that obnoxious and wasteful. Can I use LibVF.IO/GVM to get bet…

Ya, LibVF.IO & GVM are built for things like this! For example I have a friend who uses it for various Adobe programs which also don't work well on Linux.

Re: LibVF.IO: Add support for GPU Virtual Machine (GVM)

#39
post #4

What does it do? Does it let one pass a virtual GPU to the guest without complete PCI-passthrough? E.g. will I be able to share host GPU between the host system and guests?

How secure is that? Are users of a GPU completely isolated from eachother? Will there be side-channel attacks possible?

Re: LibVF.IO: Add support for GPU Virtual Machine (GVM)

#40

I run Linux for software development, but I need to also run Autodesk Fusion 360, which doesn't run on Linux. So I run it in a VirtualBox virtual machine. It works poorly as it sometimes doesn't render correctly and the performance is bad. I know that if I did some research and bought a second GPU that I could maybe get PCI-passthrough working, but I find that obnoxious and wasteful. Can I use LibVF.IO/GVM to get bet…

It depends if your GPU is supported, and such support is mostly beholden to the hardware before anything else. Currently it’s largely limited to: for Nvidia, most Maxwell, Pascal, & Turing cards; for AMD, very few obsolete cards; for Intel, gen 6–9 iGPUs.
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