Prerequisites#

Ensure the following prerequisites are met before proceeding with the installation.

Hardware Requirements#

Holoscan for Media has specific motherboard, CPU, GPU and networking card requirements.

Ensure your system complies with these requirements. These configurations have been tested with the platform.

BIOS Setup#

System tuning is essential for achieving consistent high performance from your hardware.

In particular, the SMPTE ST 2110 specifications impose a strict timing policy on the flow of data across the network stack between compliant senders and receivers. To meet this standard, you should tune your systems to reduce interference from the BIOS and operating system, and between applications running on the same system.

The following steps, based on the Rivermax Performance Tuning Guide, achieve this goal.

Restart the computer and enter BIOS/UEFI setup.

Enable SR-IOV support. Refer to the specs of your workstation.

It may be included with, or require also setting, the following virtualization features, which can be found under menus like CPU/Processor Settings and PCIe Settings:

  • Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) or AMD-Vi, also known as IOMMU (Input Output Memory Management Unit); not strictly required for SR-IOV but may need to be enabled

  • Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x) or AMD-V; in most cases, can be disabled when working only with containers, but must be enabled when running virtual machines

  • PCIe ARI (Alternative Routing-ID Interpretation); must be enabled to remove the normal limit of eight VFs per device

  • PCIe ATS (Address Translation Services); must be enabled to improve SR-IOV performance

  • PCIe ACS (Access Control Services); can be disabled to improve performance when working only with containers, but should be enabled when using virtual machines

  • PCIe AER (Advanced Error Reporting); must be enabled

AMD-Specific BIOS Setup#

  • SVM Mode: Enables or disables Secure Virtual Machine (SVM) mode, AMD’s hardware-assisted virtualization technology (AMD-V), on compatible processors. Disable this if virtual machines are not used in the cluster.

  • SMT Mode: Controls Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT), which lets each CPU core run multiple threads. For most workloads, SMT can remain enabled. However, because workloads with strict timing requirements—such as ST 2110 packet pacing—can be affected by SMT, it must be disabled to ensure compliance.

  • APIC Mode: Controls the Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC), which affects how interrupts are handled in multi-core processors. Set this to x2APIC.

  • L3 Cache as NUMA Domain: When enabled, each Core Complex (CCX) is exposed as a separate Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) domain. When disabled, memory addressing and NUMA nodes are declared per socket. Set this to Disabled.

  • Core Performance Boost: Allows CPU cores to reach turbo frequencies. This is often enabled by default, but verify to ensure it is active.

  • Memory Speed: Set to the maximum supported value for best performance.

  • C-State: Controls power-saving states for idle CPUs. Since these reduce performance, disable Global C-state Control and DF C-states.

  • P-State: Controls CPU power states. To avoid performance loss, disable P-state1 and set DF P-states to P0.

  • Determinism Slider: Set to Power. This allows cores to scale frequency independently, improving overall performance.

  • Efficiency Mode: Set to Disabled.