Home » Business » Modders get GPU virtualization running on consumer Nvidia GPUs – Computer – News

Modders get GPU virtualization running on consumer Nvidia GPUs – Computer – News

A group of modders have gotten GPU virtualization to work on Nvidia GeForce consumer GPUs. This allows users to use a video card to transfer multiple virtual machines to turn. The feature officially only works on Quadro and data center GPUs.

This vgpu_unlock mod appeared recently on Reddit, also noted Tom’s Hardware on. Users can find the mod and installation instructions at GitHub. Among other things, users must use the Nvidia GRID-driver install to get gpu virtualization working. That software requires a license, although Nvidia also offers a 90-day free trial. The mod works for various video cards with Pascal, Turing, or Ampere GPU. A list of supported GPUs can be found in code. The mod makers do warn that the mod has not yet been extensively tested.

The virtualization feature is normally only available for Quadro video cards and data center GPUs from Nvidia. However, this is a software limitation, since these professional GPUs use the same chips as the GeForce consumer video cards.

This limitation works at the driver level, the mod’s creators explain on GitHub. The driver determines whether a video card supports the virtualization function through a identifier, which is unique to each type of PCI device. The mod replaces this identification number for an identifier used by a video card that supports virtualization, which makes the GeForce video card seen in the driver as a Quadro or data center GPU.

With GPU virtualization, users can split up a video card and use it to control multiple virtual machines. This allows multiple users to use a single video card. This is different from the passthrough function which Nvidia recently tested for consumer video cards, which allow users to use a GeForce GPU for a single virtual machine.

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