The MPS control daemon, the MPS server, and the associated MPS clients communicate with each other via named pipes and UNIX domain sockets. The default directory for these pipes and sockets is /tmp/nvidia-mps. The environment variable, CUDA_MPS_PIPE_DIRECTORY, can be used to override the location of these pipes and sockets. The value of this environment variable should be consistent across all MPS clients sharing the same MPS server, and the MPS control daemon.

The recommended location for the directory containing these named pipes and domain sockets is local folders such as /tmp. If the specified location exists in a shared, multi-node filesystem, the path must be unique for each node to prevent multiple MPS servers or MPS control daemons from using the same pipes and sockets. When provisioning MPS on a per-user basis, the directory should be set to a location such that different users will not end up using the same directory.