Setting-up GPUDirect RDMA

Note

Learn more about RDMA in the technology overview section.

Note

This is not required for AJA cards support as they use their own driver (NTV2) which implements GPUDirect RDMA. However, this is required for Emergent cameras support, as their SDK (eSDK) uses the NVIDIA GPUDirect drivers.

The GPUDirect drivers (nvidia peermem) are installed with HoloPack 2.0 in dGPU mode. However - at this time - they must be reconfigured after installing MOFED drivers (either as part of the Rivermax SDK option in SDK Manager, or manually), then loaded manually to enable the use of GPUDirect RDMA with NVIDIA’s Quadro/workstation GPUs.

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# Ensure you've installed MOFED drivers first through SDKM (Rivermax SDK) or manually sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-dkms-520 && \ insmod /var/lib/dkms/nvidia/520.61.05/5.10.104-tegra/arm64/module/nvidia-peermem.ko

The GPUDirect drivers (nvidia peermem) are installed after switching to dGPU mode on HoloPack 1.2. However - at this time - they must be reconfigured after installing MOFED drivers (either as part of the Rivermax SDK option in SDK Manager, or manually), then loaded manually to enable the use of GPUDirect RDMA with NVIDIA’s Quadro/workstation GPUs.

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# Ensure you've installed MOFED drivers first through SDKM (Rivermax SDK) or manually sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-dkms-510 && \ insmod /var/lib/dkms/nvidia/510.73.08/5.10.65-tegra/aarch64/module/nvidia-peermem.ko

The GPUDirect drivers (nvidia peermem) must be manually installed to enable the use of GPUDirect RDMA with NVIDIA’s Quadro/workstation GPUs. They are not installed as part of Holopack 1.1 when selecting Rivermax SDK in the SDK Manager at this time.

  1. Download the GPUDirect Drivers for OFED: nvidia-peer-memory_1.1.tar.gz

    • If the above link does not work, navigate to the Downloads section on the GPUDirect page

  2. Install GPUDirect:

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    mv nvidia-peer-memory_1.1.tar.gz nvidia-peer-memory_1.1.orig.tar.gz tar -xvf nvidia-peer-memory_1.1.orig.tar.gz cd nvidia-peer-memory-1.1 dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc sudo dpkg -i ../nvidia-peer-memory_1.1-0_all.deb sudo dpkg -i ../nvidia-peer-memory-dkms_1.1-0_all.deb sudo service nv_peer_mem start

  3. Verify the nv_peer_mem service is running:

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    sudo service nv_peer_mem status

  4. Enable the nv_peer_mem service at boot time:

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    sudo systemctl enable nv_peer_mem sudo /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install enable nv_peer_mem

Warning

There is a known issue that prevents GPU RDMA from being enabled on the NVIDIA IGX Orin [ES] Developer Kit without a firmware update or running a manual command. Refer to the instructions in the NVIDIA IGX Orin [ES] Developer Kit User Guide for instructions.

The instructions below describe the steps to test GPUDirect using the Rivermax SDK. The test applications used by these instructions, generic_sender and generic_receiver, can then be used as samples in order to develop custom applications that use the Rivermax SDK to optimize data transfers.

Note

The Rivermax SDK can be installed onto the Developer Kit via SDK Manager by selecting it as an additional SDK during the HoloPack installation. Access to the Rivermax SDK Developer Program as well as a valid Rivermax software license is required to use the Rivermax SDK.

Running the Rivermax sample applications requires two systems, a sender and a receiver, connected via ConnectX network adapters. If two Developer Kits are used then the onboard ConnectX can be used on each system, but if only one Developer Kit is available then it is expected that another system with an add-in ConnectX network adapter will need to be used. Rivermax supports a wide array of platforms, including both Linux and Windows, but these instructions assume that another Linux based platform will be used as the sender device while the Developer Kit is used as the receiver.

Note

The $rivermax_sdk variable referenced below corresponds to the path where the Rivermax SDK package was installed. If the Rivermax SDK was installed via SDK Manager, this path will be:

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rivermax_sdk=$HOME/Documents/Rivermax/1.8.21

Install path might differ in future versions of Rivermax.

  1. Determine the logical name for the ConnectX devices that are used by each system. This can be done by using the lshw -class network command, finding the product: entry for the ConnectX device, and making note of the logical name: that corresponds to that device. For example, this output on a Developer Kit shows the onboard ConnectX device using the enp9s0f01 logical name (lshw output shortened for demonstration purposes).

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    $ sudo lshw -class network *-network:0 description: Ethernet interface product: MT28908 Family [ConnectX-6] vendor: Mellanox Technologies physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:09:00.0 <b>logical name: enp9s0f0</b> version: 00 serial: 48:b0:2d:13:9b:6b capacity: 10Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pciexpress vpd msix pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical 1000bt-fd 10000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=mlx5_core driverversion=5.4-1.0.3 duplex=full firmware=20.27.4006 (NVD0000000001) ip=10.0.0.2 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes resources: iomemory:180-17f irq:33 memory:1818000000-1819ffffff

    The instructions that follow will use the enp9s0f0 logical name for ifconfig commands, but these names should be replaced with the corresponding logical names as determined by this step.

  2. Run the generic_sender application on the sending system.

    a. Bring up the network:

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    $ sudo ifconfig enp9s0f0 up 10.0.0.1

    b. Build the sample apps:

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    $ cd ${rivermax_sdk}/apps $ make

    e. Launch the generic_sender application:

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    $ sudo ./generic_sender -l 10.0.0.1 -d 10.0.0.2 -p 5001 -y 1462 -k 8192 -z 500 -v ... +############################################# | Sender index: 0 | Thread ID: 0x7fa1ffb1c0 | CPU core affinity: -1 | Number of streams in this thread: 1 | Memory address: 0x7f986e3010 | Memory length: 59883520[B] | Memory key: 40308 +############################################# | Stream index: 0 | Source IP: 10.0.0.1 | Destination IP: 10.0.0.2 | Destination port: 5001 | Number of flows: 1 | Rate limit bps: 0 | Rate limit max burst in packets: 0 | Memory address: 0x7f986e3010 | Memory length: 59883520[B] | Memory key: 40308 | Number of user requested chunks: 1 | Number of application chunks: 5 | Number of packets in chunk: 8192 | Packet's payload size: 1462 +**********************************************

  3. Run the generic_receiver application on the receiving system.

    a. Bring up the network:

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    $ sudo ifconfig enp9s0f0 up 10.0.0.2

    b. Build the sample apps with GPUDirect support (CUDA=y):

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    $ cd ${rivermax_sdk}/apps $ make CUDA=y

    c. Launch the generic_receiver application:

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    $ sudo ./generic_receiver -i 10.0.0.2 -m 10.0.0.2 -s 10.0.0.1 -p 5001 -g 0 ... Attached flow 1 to stream. Running main receive loop... Got 5877704 GPU packets | 68.75 Gbps during 1.00 sec Got 5878240 GPU packets | 68.75 Gbps during 1.00 sec Got 5878240 GPU packets | 68.75 Gbps during 1.00 sec Got 5877704 GPU packets | 68.75 Gbps during 1.00 sec Got 5878240 GPU packets | 68.75 Gbps during 1.00 sec ...

With both the generic_sender and generic_receiver processes active, the receiver will continue to print out received packet statistics every second. Both processes can then be terminated with <ctrl-c>.

© Copyright 2022-2023, NVIDIA. Last updated on Jul 28, 2023.