Talk about Horizon Vgpu Technology

in the Horizon 6.1 release, VMware has announced support NVIDIA GRID VGPU function, then VGPU is God horse thing, today we say.

First we need to look at what a graphics processor (GPU) is. The graphics processor (GPU) is designed to assist in processing graphics-intensive application calculations. 3D programs, such as Siemens NX, AutoCAD, and so on, are typical graphics-intensive programs that typically invoke OpenGL or DirectX interfaces to invoke the GPU's computational resources to perform complex graphics processing calculations. Various industries, such as aerospace, automotive, construction, and medical, use a variety of graphics processing programs using professional GPUs.

So how does the graphics processor (GPU) and virtualization have a relationship? It is mainly based on two reasons: first, economy; second, security. First of all, the economic reasons, the traditional configuration of professional graphics processor graphics workstation is generally expensive, staffed with one, it is clear that the use of inefficient, low ROI. Second, on the safety, General graphics workstation work, such as automotive design model, data for the enterprise is extremely important, the enterprise wants to have a stronger way to protect the intellectual property of the enterprise will not be leaked out.

By using GPU virtualization as a cost-effective and secure solution, the graphics processor (GPU) is placed on virtualized server resources in the datacenter, where users share GPU computing resources, improve the efficiency of expensive GPU resources, and, on the other hand, all of the user's data is stored in the data center. The user does not save any data locally, and IT administrators can implement centralized security control of the VMS inside the data center, which greatly improves the security of the data.

let's look at VMware's technological advances in graphic processing virtualization. Before VMware announced support for NVIDIA GRID VGPU , VMware had 3 virtualization technologies for 3D graphics processing, software 3D, Vsga,vdga.

software 3D –vmware develop a  VGA driver (embedded in VMware Tools), the driver can enough software to implement opengl or part of the DirectX interface, The graphics processing program then calls the VGA driver for graphics processing. It should be noted that the VGA driver does not use any GPU hardware processing power, the full use of the CPU for graphics processing, its graphics processing capacity is very limited, only in the CPU load, some very lightweight graphics processing operations, we can consider the technology.

vsga (virtualshared Graphics)-VSGA still uses the same VGA driver as Software3d, but with a step in the software 3D, VSGA can offload the compute load to the graphics processor (GPU) hardware resources for hardware acceleration. VSGA technology can divide the GPU's computing resources into multiple virtual graphics cards, depending on the amount of memory allocated by each virtual machine (512M max) and the size of the physical memory on the GPU. This technology requires a GPU manufacturer to provide an esxi. Vib Drive, so not a random GPU graphics can use VSGA technology, the current only nvidia and amd  two manufacturers of specific models of GPUs can support VSGA , you can find the corresponding ESXi on their website. Vib Drive.

VDGA (Virtual dedicatedgraphics) – as the name implies, the virtual proprietary graphics card means that the computing resources of a physical graphics card are exclusively owned by a single virtual machine. When a user installs a physical GPU card on a physical host, the video card can be recognized directly by the ESXi server and then displayed in the hardware list of the virtual machine. This technique is suitable for advanced users who use the depth of graphics processing.

In summary, we can see thatsoftware , VSGA, VDGA from software CPU emulation, GPU Shard hardware acceleration, to GPU exclusivity, the use of GPU-to-hardware computing power is incremental.

So the question has come, already has above these three kinds of technology, why still have Vgpu, what is its position? In short, VGPU is a technology that has achieved a better balance of degrees of freedom and functionality between VSGA and VDGA. It allows users to slice the GPU's computing resources according to Nvidia's specifications, and can be combined to meet the requirements of users of different graphical computing resources. Currently only the Nvidia one manufacturer's GPU graphics card (K1 and K2 two kinds of graphics cards) can provide support VGPU technology. NVIDIA provides an esxi. The VIB driver is used to dispatch management VMs to GPU graphics application resources, Nvidia also provides a graphics driver installed on the VM so that the graphics processor calls the OpenGL or DirectX interface to use the graphics hardware resources assigned to the virtual machine.

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Users can refer to the official website of Nvidia, http://www.nvidia.com/object/vmware.html, for a variety of specifications for VGPU graphics, as well as installation configuration documentation.

Lists the supported user numbers supported by K1/K2 and the corresponding performance parameters. For example, K2 graphics cards are sliced up to 16 users for use.

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If you want to experience Horizon VGPU yourself, it's easy, first of all, to have a Horizon 6.0 environment and then an Nvidia K1 or K2 graphics card, see the documentation http://www.nvidia.com/object/grid-vgpu-deployment-guide.html Step by Step just fine.

about the Sam Zhao , EUC Solution Department Manager. In software development, testing, project management has a years of IT experience , published three patents and co-author of a book.

This article is from the "VMware End User Computing" blog, reproduced please contact the author!

Talk about Horizon Vgpu Technology