Is it normal for nvidia-smi
to keep the GPU awake while it is running? I’m on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (kernel version 5.15, nvidia driver version 495.46) and am using the prime profile on-demand
. I wanted to run nvidia-smi --loop=1
to monitor if applications are indeed running on the integrated graphics, but it keeps the gpu awake.
The first time I run nvidia-smi
, it will take a few seconds to start and will show N/A power usage, as expected. But if I run it again right after, it will instantly show output and now it’s using ~10W. It goes back to sleep after a few seconds. When running it with the --loop
option, the GPU will constantly stay awake consuming 10W.
So I just wanted to know if this is normal behavior? If so, is there another way to monitor the gpu without waking it?