Preface
You can use a host with a compatible graphics processing unit (GPU) to run virtual machines in Red Hat Virtualization that are suited for graphics-intensive tasks and for running software that cannot run without a GPU, such as CAD.
You can assign a GPU to a virtual machine in one of the following ways:
- GPU passthrough: You can assign a host GPU to a single virtual machine, so the virtual machine, instead of the host, uses the GPU.
Virtual GPU (vGPU): You can divide a physical GPU device into one or more virtual devices, referred to as mediated devices. You can then assign these mediated devices to one or more virtual machines as virtual GPUs. These virtual machines share the performance of a single physical GPU. For some GPUs, only one mediated device can be assigned to a single guest. vGPU support is only available on selected NVIDIA GPUs.
Example:
A host has four GPUs. Each GPU can support up to 16 vGPUs, for a total of 64 vGPUs. Some possible vGPU assignments are:
- one virtual machine with 64 vGPUs
- 64 virtual machines, each with one vGPU
- 32 virtual machines, each with one vGPU; eight virtual machines, each with two vGPUs; 4 virtual machines, each with four vGPUs
