SR-IOV GPU for Compute/Transcode Purposes

Hardware Enterprise Gear
8

This is doable, but I’ve never done it. If you know of any good tutorials please share :slight_smile:

9

My god I’m impressed with my own idea :smiley: I have an HD 5970 doing nothing and I’ve just figured out how to do pass through. This would allow me to run two VMs with GPUs. The HD 5970 actually shows up as two devices in Windows and Linux.

10

Oh hella, please let me know the results of your experiment.

11

Look on YouTube for " 24 Thread PowerEdge R710 with 2xGPU PCIe x16 Gaming"

He shows how to get 12v power for the GPU in a server.

1 Like
12

What is the hypervisor you are using?

I have an nVidia P2000 installed in a SuperMicro server with Server 2019 Hyper-V. I have that card passed to a guest Server 2019 running Remote Desktop Services. Works like a charm.

Technically any AMD card using GCN should work.

13

For actual SR-IOV, Nvidia does not have any options, so it is AMD only. AMD calls GPUs with SR-IOV MX-GPU.

Here are your options:
FirePro S7100x ~$180 USD used, Only available in MXM format.
FirePro S7150 - less common, I have commonly only seen x2 version
FirePro S7150x2 ~$500 USD used, dual slot
Radeon Pro V340 ~$10,000 USD new, hard to find outside of OEM systems, dual slot

Not to say that a dual GPU card can’t work, but that is not SR-IOV technically.

4 Likes
14

I am using Proxmox.

15

Thanks Cake!

But maybe it would be cheaper to just get external GPU dock and then pass that though to the VM?

I do have a spare r9 390 laying around.

16

I thought the external GPU docks available are all thunderbolt? Does your server have thunderbolt?

17

I would need to get a thunderbolt expansion card but I could grab one of these

And stick on a shelf in my rack and pass that to the VM.

Fuck nvm thats intel only xD

18
  • mxm to pcie adapter?
2 Likes
19

Hmm, I thought thunderbolt required UEFI support. For example the gigabyte thunderbolt card requires a motherboard with a specific header AFAIK.

20

How would I cool that?

21

I just realized since I use epyc I wont be able to do thunderbolt.

22

cooler like this one


you have a server chassis so woudnt be an airflow issue

23

I looked into this, and the only reasonably priced PCIe to MXM adapters that I found are PCIE 1x, which might be pretty crippling for performance.

If you can find other better adapters, great, I just did not find any.

2 Likes
24

Those combined would be ~$290. Not bad.

25

that top one is with gpu so $170 + adapter

26

There are better adapters here:
https://eurocom.com/ec/pricelist(2,451)MultiGPU

But $500 is a bit steep IMO.

1 Like
27

https://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/new-mxm3-to-pcie-adapter-from-eurocom-is-ideal-for-use-in-small-form-factor-pc-40037529

RIP that price

1 Like