Linux Server GPU Question

Hey everybody,

 

So I have a Dell r710 with 32GBs of ram and two x5650 Xeon cpus. This server is running Debian and hosts a whole assortment of vms. I have an Nvidia Quadro graphics card that isn't in the server because I've never felt that what I am doing on the server would use the graphics card. The server is headless so I don't need it for video output (I use the onboard video for that anyways) and I don't think that the vms would use the graphics card if I put it in the system. I am wondering if anybody can prove me wrong! The GPU is just sitting around doing nothing, so if I could put it to work I'd love to. Any information anybody offers would be a giant help! Thanks!

It's completely possible to pass a PCI device directly from the host to the VM. However it would all depend on what sort of software you're running, as well as the dilemma of what it would be used for. You could always throw it to work bitcoin mining if you wanted, but as that generally requires a huge farm to get anywhere with, a more practical/idle use for the hardware could go towards something like Folding@Home. Which lets you basically donate your hardware to stanford students for use in folding proteins.

If you want to see something related on a hardware level, check this out.