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Author Archives: Uday Kurkure

Episode 3: Performance Comparison of Native GPU to Virtualized GPU and Scalability of Virtualized GPUs for Machine Learning

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In our third episode of machine learning performance with vSphere 6.x, we look at the virtual GPU vs. the physical GPU. In addition, we extend the performance results of machine learning workloads using VMware DirectPath I/O (passthrough) vs. NVIDIA GRID vGPU that have been partially addressed in previous episodes:

Machine Learning with Virtualized GPUs

Performance is one of the biggest concerns that keeps high performance computing (HPC) users from choosing virtualization as the solution for deploying HPC applications despite virtualization benefits such as reduced administration costs, resource utilization efficiency, energy saving, and security. However, with the constant evolution of virtualization technologies, the performance gaps between bare metal and virtualization have almost disappeared, and, in some use cases, virtualized applications can achieve better performance than running on bare metal because of the intelligent and highly optimized resource utilization of hypervisors. For example, a prior study [1] shows that vector machine applications running on a virtualized cluster of 10 servers have a better execution time than running on bare metal.

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Machine Learning on vSphere 6 with Nvidia GPUs – Episode 2

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by Hari Sivaraman, Uday Kurkure, and Lan Vu

In a previous blog [1], we looked at how machine learning workloads (MNIST and CIFAR-10) using TensorFlow running in vSphere 6 VMs in an NVIDIA GRID configuration reduced the training time from hours to minutes when compared to the same system running no virtual GPUs.

Here, we extend our study to multiple workloads—3D CAD and machine learning—run at the same time vs. run independently on a same vSphere server.

This is episode 2 of a series of blogs on machine learning with vSphere. Also see:

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Machine Learning on VMware vSphere 6 with NVIDIA GPUs

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by Uday Kurkure, Lan Vu, and Hari Sivaraman

Machine learning is an exciting area of technology that allows computers to behave without being explicitly programmed, that is, in the way a person might learn. This tech is increasingly applied in many areas like health science, finance, and intelligent systems, among others.

In recent years, the emergence of deep learning and the enhancement of accelerators like GPUs has brought the tremendous adoption of machine learning applications in a broader and deeper aspect of our lives. Some application areas include facial recognition in images, medical diagnosis in MRIs, robotics, automobile safety, and text and speech recognition.

Machine learning workloads have also become a critical part in cloud computing. For cloud environments based on vSphere, you can even deploy a machine learning workload yourself using GPUs via the VMware DirectPath I/O or vGPU technology.

GPUs reduce the time it takes for a machine learning or deep learning algorithm to learn (known as the training time) from hours to minutes. In a series of blogs, we will present the performance results of running machine learning benchmarks on VMware vSphere using NVIDIA GPUs.

This is episode 1. Also see:

Episode 1: Performance Results of Machine Learning with DirectPath I/O and NVIDIA GPUs

In this episode, we present the performance results of running machine learning benchmarks on VMware vSphere with NVIDIA GPUs in DirectPath I/O mode and on GRID virtual GPU (vGPU) mode.

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