HP NVIDIA, NVLink User Manual

TECHNICAL

WHITE PAPER

CONTENTS & NAVIGATION

2

Introduction

2

Software Considerations

2-3

Hardware Considerations

3-4

Operating System Conguration

4

Monitoring NVIDIA® NVLink™ Status

USING HP WORKSTATIONS WITH
NVIDIA® NVLINK™ FOR NVIDIA®
PRO GRAPHICS CARDS

1.

TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER

INTRODUCTION

CONTENTS &
NAVIGATION

2

Introduction

2

Software Considerations

2-3

Hardware Considerations

3-4

Operating System Conguration

4

Monitoring NVIDIA® NVLink™ Status

HP Workstations are fully equipped to allow users to take advantage of a new NVIDIA® technology – NVIDIA®
NVLink™. In a nutshell, NVIDIA® NVLink™ allows two matching graphics cards to communicate directly via

a high-speed interconnection eectively allowing the available memory of both GPUs to be combined.
This allows for applications and workloads designed with NVIDIA® NVLink™ in mind to benet from signicant

performance increases.

For more information, please review NVIDIA's documentation and examples:

• https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/nvlink-bridges/

SOFTWARE CONSIDERATIONS

To take advantage of NVIDIA® NVLink™ software must be explicitly designed to do so. Unlike some other
multi-GPU methods, NVIDIA® NVLink™ is dierent in that simply connecting NVIDIA® NVLink™ bridges does not
automatically benet a workload or use case; software must be designed with NVIDIA® NVLink™ in mind and

written in a way to take full advantage of it.

NVIDIA provides free SDKs and documentation which enable a software developer to include NVIDIA® NVLink™
support in their applications. Specically, NVIDIA® CUDA® SDK and NCCL are minimum requirements for
NVIDIA® NVLink™ enablement in software. These resources can be found here:

• https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit

• https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/

• https://developer.nvidia.com/nccl

2.

In addition to having compatible software, NVIDIA® NVLink™-capable hardware must be correctly installed
and congured to take advantage of NVIDIA® NVLink™.

HARDWARE CONSIDERATIONS

NVIDIA® NVLink™ is supported with HP Z8 G4, HP Z4 G4, and HP Z840 Workstations that have been properly
congured.
To prepare your system for use with NVIDIA® NVLink™ the following hardware must be installed in a

supported system:

• 2x NVIDIA® NVLink™-capable NVIDIA® cards, such as NVIDIA® RTX™ A6000 or NVIDIA® Quadro® GV100

• Please note, GPU generation mixing is not supported; the cards must be exact matches
(ie. 2x NVIDIA® Quadro® GV100)

•

NVIDIA® NVLink™ only works between exactly 2 cards (ie. 3-way NVIDIA® NVLink™
is not possible)