Hi there,
is it possible to power-off a single GPU on a dual-GPU (e.g. Tesla K80)?
Or can you set such a GPU to standby-mode by software/driver?
Best Regards
You can hide a GPU’s presence from CUDA apps via the CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES environment variable. This works in both Windows/Linux.
If the question is about power consumption: A GPU that is not in use should automatically enter into a lower-power standby mode. Even in that mode it may draw 30W to 40W though, especially for architectures prior to Maxwell, which tended to be more power-hungry than modern GPUs. To my knowledge there is no way to power off a GPU completely.
thank you very much for your answers. Yeah, it is about power consumption, and not about device selection like with CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES.
I also cannot remember an option in drivers or in BIOS to disable a GPU unit. So you have to unplug the whole thing or run the dual-GPU as it is.
Some motherboards have DIP switches that let you physically disable specific PCI-E slots, but that is usually only seen with higher-end non-OEM boards. In this case for the K80 since both run from the same PCI-E interface that wouldn’t help.
Interesting, I have never encountered such a board. And I completely overlooked that OP wants to disable one GPU of a dual-GPU card. Not possible.