Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU
-
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/cloud-platform/windows-server-2016
https://technet.microsoft.com/windows-server-docs/compute/hyper-v/what-s-new-in-hyper-v-on-windows
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/virtualization/2015/11/23/discrete-device-assignment-gpus/
Discrete device assignment (new)
This feature lets you give a virtual machine direct and exclusive access to some PCIe hardware devices. Using a device in this way bypasses the Hyper-V virtualization stack, which results in faster access. For details on supported hardware, see "Discrete device assignment" in System requirements for Hyper-V on Windows Server 2016. For details, including how to use this feature and considerations, see the post "Discrete Device Assignment -- Description and background" in the Virtualization blog.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? It's something I've wanted to see for a long time. Still reading through the articles....
-
"The catch is that, when you pass a GPU through to VM, the environment for the GPU changes a little bit. For one thing, the driver can’t see the rest of the machine, to respond to its configuration or to tune things up. Second, access to memory works a little differently when you turn on an I/O MMU, changing timings and such. So the GPU will tend to work if the machine’s BIOS has already set up the GPU optimally, and this limits the machines that are likely to work well with GPUs. Basically, these are servers which were built for hosting GPUs. They’ll be the sorts of things that the salesman wants to push on you when you use words like “desktop virtualization” and “rendering.” When I look at a server, I can tell whether it was designed for GPU work instantly, because it has lots of long (x16) PCI Express slots, really big power supplies and fans that make a spooky howling sound."
Best technical description ever.
-
@MattSpeller said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
Anyone have any thoughts on this? It's something I've wanted to see for a long time. Still reading through the articles....
Well, having CUDA (and all the other cool names) in a VM is probably a big deal for many different use cases.
-
@thwr said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
@MattSpeller said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
Anyone have any thoughts on this? It's something I've wanted to see for a long time. Still reading through the articles....
Well, having CUDA (and all the other cool names) in a VM is probably a big deal for many different use cases.
Playing games in VDI just got easier in the land of Microsoft.
-
@travisdh1 said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
@thwr said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
@MattSpeller said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
Anyone have any thoughts on this? It's something I've wanted to see for a long time. Still reading through the articles....
Well, having CUDA (and all the other cool names) in a VM is probably a big deal for many different use cases.
Playing games in VDI just got easier in the land of Microsoft.
That's what I'm wondering about!
Also having one VM for our photoshop guys to use that's just loaded to the tits with GPU, RAM and SSD. That alone would save us thousands on replacing their rather beefy laptops.
-
@MattSpeller said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
@travisdh1 said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
@thwr said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
@MattSpeller said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
Anyone have any thoughts on this? It's something I've wanted to see for a long time. Still reading through the articles....
Well, having CUDA (and all the other cool names) in a VM is probably a big deal for many different use cases.
Playing games in VDI just got easier in the land of Microsoft.
That's what I'm wondering about!
Also having one VM for our photoshop guys to use that's just loaded to the tits with GPU, RAM and SSD. That alone would save us thousands on replacing their rather beefy laptops.
Yep. CAD/FEA/etc. also become viable. Not that Microsoft isn't still playing catch up with everything else.
-
I never quite gleaned from the article whether it was you could only pass 1 VM per GPU, or if you could do GPU sharing and let multiple VMs use the same GPU?
-
@dafyre said in Windows Server 2016 - Discrete GPU:
I never quite gleaned from the article whether it was you could only pass 1 VM per GPU, or if you could do GPU sharing and let multiple VMs use the same GPU?
I haven't read the entire thing, so I may be mistaken. They were talking about two different modes of GPU pass through. One mode where you have 1GPU to 1VM, and another one where you can share 1GPU with many VM.
