Comment by rwmj

10 hours ago

How is this different (in effect, not technically) from just using PCI passthrough, apart from being less safe and less tested?

Fair point, we still have a long way to go in terms of security AND being suitable for everyday use.

However, nvgpu is meant to be used in PCI passthrough in scenarios where you would want to run and share your GPU across multiple KVM guests, or you don't want to detach the GPU from the host, and plug it into the VM you are running... you know, that little dance you do everytime you want to game inside a VM.

  > just using PCI passthrough

On a laptop, I never got a working setup where I could attach/detach a modern nvidia card from host linux. So something that can do without is better. But intel SRIOV is a thing as well, which should be the secure alternative.

  • I got it working on my laptop. It has an Intel integrated iGPU and an NVIDIA discrete dGPU. I was able to pass through the NVIDIA GPU and use it for CUDA/etc.

    But the NVIDIA dGPU is muxless, so apparently all of the display outputs (laptop screen, HDMI outputs) are effectively hard wired to the iGPU. dGPU can render in a VM, it just has no where it can send it without trying to use Looking Glass or similar approach.