How-To: Connect to GPU Nodes¶
The cluster has seven nodes with four Tesla V100 GPUs each: hpc-gpu-{1..7}.
Connecting to a node with GPUs is easy.
You simply request a GPU using the --gres=gpu:tesla:COUNT argument to srun and batch.
This will automatically place your job in the gpu partition (which is where the GPU nodes live) and allocate a number of COUNT GPUs to your job.
Note
Recently, --gres=gpu:tesla:COUNT was often not able to allocate the right partion on it's own.
If scheduling a GPU fails, consider additionally indicating the GPU partion explicitely with --partition gpu (or #SBATCH --partition gpu in batch file).
Hint
Make sure to read the FAQ entry "I have problems connecting to the GPU node! What's wrong?".
Interactive Use of GPU Nodes is Discouraged
While interactive computation on the GPU nodes is convenient, it makes it very easy to forget a job after your computation is complete and let it run idle. While your job is allocated, it blocks the allocated GPUs and other users cannot use them although you might not be actually using them. Please prefer batch jobs for your GPU jobs over interactive jobs.
Further, interactive GPU jobs are currently limited to 24 hours. We will monitor the situation and adjust that limit to optimize GPU usage and usability.
Allocation of GPUs through Slurm is mandatory
In other word: using GPUs from SSH sessions is prohibited. The scheduler is not aware of manually allocated GPUs and this interferes with other users' jobs.
Prequisites¶
You have to register with hpc-helpdesk@bih-charite.de for requesting access. Afterwards, you can connect to the GPU nodes as shown below.
Preparation¶
We will setup a miniconda installation with pytorch testing the GPU.
If you already have this setup then you can skip this step
res-login-1:~$ srun --pty bash
med0703:~$ wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
med0703:~$ bash Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh -b -p ~/miniconda3
med0703:~$ source ~/miniconda3/bin/activate
med0703:~$ conda create -y -n gpu-test pytorch cudatoolkit=10.2 -c pytorch
med0703:~$ conda activate gpu-test
med0703:~$ python -c 'import torch; print(torch.cuda.is_available())'
False
med0703:~$ exit
res-login-1:~$
The False shows that CUDA is not available on the node but that is to be expected.
We're only warming up!
Allocating GPUs¶
Let us now allocate a GPU. The Slurm schedule will properly allocate GPUs for you and setup the environment variable that tell CUDA which devices are available. The following dry run shows these environment variables (and that they are not available on the login node).
res-login-1:~$ export | grep CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES
res-login-1:~$ srun --gres=gpu:tesla:1 --pty bash
med0303:~$ export | grep CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES
declare -x CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES="0"
med0303:~$ exit
res-login-1:~$ srun --gres=gpu:tesla:2 --pty bash
med0303:~$ export | grep CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES
declare -x CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES="0,1"
You can see that you can also reserve multiple GPUs.
If we were to open two concurrent connections (e.g., in a screen) to the same node when allocating one GPU each, the allocated GPUs would be non-overlapping.
Note that any two jobs are isolated using Linux cgroups ("container" technology 🚀) so you cannot accidentally use a GPU of another job.
Now to the somewhat boring part where we show that CUDA actually works.
res-login-1:~$ srun --gres=gpu:tesla:1 --pty bash
med0301:~$ nvcc --version
nvcc: NVIDIA (R) Cuda compiler driver
Copyright (c) 2005-2019 NVIDIA Corporation
Built on Wed_Oct_23_19:24:38_PDT_2019
Cuda compilation tools, release 10.2, V10.2.89
med0301:~$ source ~/miniconda3/bin/activate
med0301:~$ conda activate gpu-test
med0301:~$ python -c 'import torch; print(torch.cuda.is_available())'
True
Note
Recently, --gres=gpu:tesla:COUNT was often not able to allocate the right partion on it's own.
If scheduling a GPU fails, consider additionally indicating the GPU partion explicitely with --partition gpu (or #SBATCH --partition gpu in batch file).
Bonus #1: Who is using the GPUs?¶
Use squeue to find out about currently queued jobs (the egrep only keeps the header and entries in the gpu partition).
res-login-1:~$ squeue | egrep -iw 'JOBID|gpu'
JOBID PARTITION NAME USER ST TIME NODES NODELIST(REASON)
33 gpu bash holtgrem R 2:26 1 med0301
Bonus #2: Is the GPU running?¶
To find out how active the GPU nodes actually are, you can connect to the nodes (without allocating a GPU you can do this even if the node is full) and then use nvidia-smi.
res-login-1:~$ ssh med0301 bash
med0301:~$ nvidia-smi
Fri Mar 6 11:10:08 2020
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 440.33.01 Driver Version: 440.33.01 CUDA Version: 10.2 |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M| Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap| Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
| 0 Tesla V100-SXM2... Off | 00000000:18:00.0 Off | 0 |
| N/A 62C P0 246W / 300W | 16604MiB / 32510MiB | 99% Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| 1 Tesla V100-SXM2... Off | 00000000:3B:00.0 Off | 0 |
| N/A 61C P0 270W / 300W | 16604MiB / 32510MiB | 100% Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| 2 Tesla V100-SXM2... Off | 00000000:86:00.0 Off | 0 |
| N/A 39C P0 55W / 300W | 0MiB / 32510MiB | 0% Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| 3 Tesla V100-SXM2... Off | 00000000:AF:00.0 Off | 0 |
| N/A 44C P0 60W / 300W | 0MiB / 32510MiB | 4% Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: GPU Memory |
| GPU PID Type Process name Usage |
|=============================================================================|
| 0 43461 C python 16593MiB |
| 1 43373 C python 16593MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Fair Share / Fair Use¶
Note that allocating a GPU makes it unavailable for everyone else.
There is currently no technical restriction in place on the GPU nodes, so please behave nicely and cooperatively.
If you see someone blocking the GPU nodes for long time, then first find out who it is.
You can type getent passwd USER_NAME on any cluster node to see the email address (and work phone number if added) of the user.
Send a friendly email to the other user, most likely they blocked the node accidentally.
If you cannot resolve the issue (e.g., the user is not reachable) then please contact hpc-helpdesk@bih-charite.de with your issue.