Dynamic allocation of physical graphics processing units to virtual machines

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9142004-B2
Application number	US-201213722998-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 20, 2012
Priority date	Dec 20, 2012
Publication date	Sep 22, 2015
Grant date	Sep 22, 2015

Abstract

Methods, techniques, and systems for dynamically allocating graphics processing units among virtual machines are provided. Example embodiments provide a dynamic GPU allocation system (“DGAS”), which enables the efficient allocation of physical GPU resources to one or more virtual machines. In one embodiment, the DGAS comprises virtualization logic running on a server computing system that computes GPU benefit factors for the virtual machines on a dynamic basis, and combines the computed GBFs with static priorities to determine a ranked ordering of virtual machines. The available GPU resources are then allocated to some subset of these ranked virtual machines as physical GPU capacity is matched with the requirements of the subset. Physical GPU resources are then allocated to the subset of virtual machines that have the highest promise of GPU utilization.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A computer-implemented method in a server computing system for dynamically allocating physical graphics processing unit (GPU) resources among a plurality of virtual machines to be potentially allocated some portion of the physical GPU resources, the physical GPU resources including processing bandwidth of at least one physical GPU available to the server computing system, comprising:
determining a processing capacity of each physical GPU resource;
de…

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Abiezzi Salim
• Fonseca Jose
• Sheldon Mark
• Hourihane Alan

Classifications

• G06F9/45533 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F9/5044

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F2209/5021

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06T1/20 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F9/505

  Physics · mapped topic