Simplified access to the NVIDIA CUDA toolkit on SUSE Linux for HPC

Overview

The High-Performance Computing industry is rapidly embracing the use of AI and ML technology in addition to legacy parallel computing. Heterogeneous Computing, the use of both CPUs and accelerators like graphics processing units (GPUs), has become increasingly more common and GPUs from NVIDIA are the most popular accelerators used today for AI/ML workloads. To get the full advantage of NVIDIA GPUs, you need to use the CUDA parallel computing platform and programming toolkit. The CUDA Toolkit includes GPU-accelerated libraries, a compiler, development tools and the CUDA runtime. To get the full advantage of NVIDIA GPUs, you need to use NVIDIA CUDA, which is a general purpose parallel computing platform and programming model for NVIDIA GPUs. The NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit includes GPU-accelerated libraries, a compiler, development tools and the CUDA runtime. CUDA supports the SUSE Linux operating system distributions (both SUSE Enterprise and OpenSUSE) and NVIDIA provides a repository with the necessary packages to easily install the CUDA Toolkit and NVIDIA drivers on SUSE. To simplify installation of NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit on SUSE Linux Enterprise for High Performance Computing (SLE HPC) 15, we have included a new SUSE Module, NVIDIA Compute Module 15. This Module adds the NVIDIA CUDA network repository to your SLE HPC system. You can select it at installation time or activate it post installation. This module is available for use with all SLE HPC 15 Service Packs. Note that the NVIDIA Compute Module 15 is currently only available for the SLE HPC 15 product.

Post-Installation Process via Yast

Installing via Yast

1. Start Yast and select System Extensions

2. After YaST checks the registration for the system, a list of modules that are installed or available is displayed.

Click on the box to select the NVIDIA Compute Module 15 X86-64 Notice that a URL for the EULA is included in the Details section. Please comply with the NVIDIA EULA terms.

3. Information on the EULA for the CUDA drivers is displayed.

Agree and click Next

4. You must trust the GnuPG key for the CUDA repository.

Click Trust

5. You will be given one more confirmation screen

Click Accept

6. After adding the repository, you can install the CUDA drivers.

Start Yast and select Software Management” then search for cuda Select the cuda meta package and press Accept

7. A large number of packages will be installed

Press Continue to proceed

That’s it! You are now ready to start using the CUDA toolkit to harness the power of NVIDIA GPUs.

Summary

Managing heterogeneous computing environments has become increasingly important for HPC and AI/ML administrators. The NVIDIA Compute Module is one way we are working to make using these technologies easier to use.