IBM Cloud Docs
Managing GPUs and accelerators

Managing GPUs and accelerators

The GPU-enabled family of profiles provides on demand, cost-effective access to GPUs and accelerators. GPUs and accelerators help to accelerate the processing time that is required for compute intensive workloads such as AI, machine learning, inferencing and more. To use the GPUs and accelerators, make sure that you install the appropriate driver and associated toolkit for your workloads.

Configuring a virtual server instance with an NVIDIA GPU

  1. Provision a virtual server instance by choosing an NVIDIA GPU profile in the Profile field. Stock and custom operating system images are supported.
  2. Install the NVIDIA GPU driver for your virtual server instance's image and GPU profile. An NVIDIA driver level of R440 or newer is recommended. To download the drivers, see NVIDIA's Download drivers page.
  3. Install associated toolkit for your workload. Visit NVIDIA's CUDA toolkit downloads page.

For detailed instructions to complete Steps 2 and 3, other GPU tools, and examples, see How to Use V100-Based GPUs on IBM Cloud VPC.

For a Linux focused guide on installing the NVIDIA drivers, see the NVIDIA Driver Installation Quickstart Guide.

If you want to automate the installation of the drivers, you can use the User data section of the virtual server. By using the user data field, you can input a script that issues the commands to install the NVIDIA drivers.

Configuring a virtual server instance with an Intel Gaudi 3 AI Accelerator

  1. Provision a virtual server instance by choosing the Intel® Gaudi® 3 AI Accelerator instance profile in the Profile field. Stock and custom operating system images are supported.
  2. Install the Intel Gaudi 3 AI Accelerator software and drivers for your virtual server. To download the drivers, see Intel Gaudi Driver and Software Installation page.

Integrating drivers into a custom image from volume

  1. Provision a virtual server instance with a GPU and install the drivers.
  2. Create an image from the virtual server instance stock image boot volume. For more information, see Creating an image from a volume.
  3. Repeat the Image from volume process to deploy across multiple instances.

Next steps

For more information, see the NVIDIA driver documentation.