Nevertheless, modern graphics adapters often support multiple GPU chips, and each GPU chip can be assigned to different VMs. Pass-through cannot assign different cores to different VMs within the same GPU chip. This means a GPU chip might have many cores on board, but pass-through assigns the entire GPU chip - and all its cores - to the associated VM. Pass-through operates at the chip level, not the core level.

However, other VMs cannot access or benefit from that GPU. This technique is sometimes referred to as virtual dedicated graphics acceleration ( vDGA). The VM then has complete use of the GPU and can realize 100% of the GPU's capabilities, including processing power and associated graphics memory. When a GPU operates in pass-through mode, the hypervisor assigns one GPU to one VM. What is GPU pass-through?Ī pass-through mode provides access, control and use of an entire device. Let's take a closer look at GPU support and review the steps to include GPUs in hypervisors, such as VMware. GPU support often must be enabled deliberately and added to VM configurations before the VM can use those GPU capabilities. Hypervisors support GPUs in either pass-through or virtual GPU ( vGPU) modes. The addition of GPU support to VMs enables virtualized workloads on premises and in the cloud to handle the demanding computation efficiently for tasks such as real-time data visualization and virtual desktop graphics.īut GPU support isn't automatic.

Windows 10 vm workstation