Intel Flex GPU with SR-IOV for GPU accelarated VDIs
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Not opposed to this, I'm not a private company though, we're (my organization) government so it doesn't move as quickly with approvals. I know that seems like a deflection, more transparency. We currently have a commitment with Citrix/XenServer as part of their new licensing model to run all my other Citrix technology and I'm investigating alternatives to allow for the cards to operate effectively. Our new servers will hold over (just because they are faster) our end users while we evaluate. It's not like they can't do their work, just some things take a bit to render on their VDI than those running physical machines. We've even contemplated, like those that posted earlier, going away from VDI, but it still seems to be the best solution for what we do and the limited technicians we have on staff. We've been all in with Citrix for years.
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@olivierlambert Another option is possibly applying for Intel Developer Zone Premier. At this level they provide hardware testing support, I'm not sure if this means they can ship their hardware to companies to test against.
But if that's the case then you could then get the Intel Flex GPU and their other products ahead of time. As well as a closer connection to Intel for any issues, which come up involving XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/programs/overview.html#gs.ko8q8e
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Entering a big vendor program is probably 100 or 1000 times harder to grabbing a GPU ourselves. Now, the challenge is finding one in stock in EU.
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@olivierlambert said in Intel Flex GPU with SR-IOV for GPU accelarated VDIs:
Entering a big vendor program is probably 100 or 1000 times harder to grabbing a GPU ourselves. Now, the challenge is finding one in stock in EU.
Maybe but the value out of it being able to access information, as well as easy access to people at Intel would pay for itself. As well as access to up coming products, to use for testing. Also would make accessing the card easier as, currently you need to buy a solution from a builder that uses the card.
@jrouerdc Have you read the https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2025/03/14/the-future-of-xcp-ng-lts/ blog post yet? Evaluating, planning and potentially using XCP-ng version 8.3 would be a very good idea. This because the LTS release of 8.3 will have the 2TB VDI disk limit removed, also an extensive support lifecycle compared to 8.2.
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I received one card, I quickly tested it, you can actually see 2x GPU (as expected), PCI passthrough each to a different VM. So at least, basic stuff works.
A next step (when we can staff someone) is to check how to manually enable SRIOV on the device and pass it to the VMs, and in the end, get that done in XAPI to make it integrated with XO.
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@olivierlambert Great to hear...
Looking for forward to have Arc GPU support. If possible can you please be specific on the GPU hardware you have and which is being tested. As you know, someone might have the one you have or a similar GPU that they can use. From what you posted, I assume that you might have the ARC Pro B60 Dual 48G by Maxsun - correct me if I am wrong.
Lately, I am trying to source a Arc Pro B60. I do not have any timeline when I would be able to obtain one.
At least for the time being and considering the alleged MSRP for battlematrix - Arc Pro cards, Intel seems to be the best value.
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No, I have an Intel Flex 170
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@olivierlambert If I remember right, you should be able to see 62 VF's on that card. There might be a tool needed to define how many VF's are present like on a NIC.
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Yes but in order to see the VF I need a working driver in the Dom0 first
Probably a lot easier with a more recent kernel in XCP-ng 9.0 -
@olivierlambert Ideally you need to be somewhere into Kernel 6. 6.12 is sticking out in my head, but I'm not positive when support got fully integrated.
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Upstream inclusion is ultra recent, but you can always add drivers yourself (still requiring a relatively recent kernel IIRC). Anyway, we have the hardware and it will be in the roadmap at least to explore
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@olivierlambert While VDI is maybe not as vital as it once was...I'm experimenting with multimedia work in XCP-ng. Having a VM with GPU off-loading of CODEC encoding would be nice. It's a pretty big CPU hit to make that go.
