There are only 8G gpu memory on Standard NV12ads A10 v5 VM instead of 24G

Question

I deployed Standard NV12ads A10 v5 to Azure and then installed the GRID driver from Install NVIDIA GPU drivers on N-series VMs running Linux (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/n-series-driver-setup). I tried versions 550.144.03 and 535.161.08. The result is the same. After installing drivers I run nvidia-smi and get 8192MiB.

I can't understand where is the other 16G.

Answer 1

Hi cusl,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A platform.

Based on your question description I understand that you are seeing 8 GB of GPU memory on your Standard NV12ads A10 v5 VM, instead of the expected 24 GB.

The Standard NV12ads A10 v5 VM utilizes NVIDIA A10 GPUs, which support a feature called GPU partitioning. This allows Azure to allocate portions of the GPU memory to different virtual machines based on the requirement.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/a10-azure-instances/

The Standard NV12ads A10 v5 VM is designed to provide 8 GiB of GPU memory, which is a fraction of the total 24 GiB available on the A10 GPU. This means that while the physical GPU has 24 GiB, your specific VM configuration is set to utilize only 8 GiB at this time.

Please find the below document for your reference:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/accelerate-graphicsheavy-workloads-using-nvads-a10-v5-azure/

The remaining 16 GB of GPU memory is not accessible because your current VM configuration (Standard NV12ads A10 v5) is set to utilize only a portion of the available resources due to Azure's GPU partitioning strategy. If you need more memory for your applications, resizing to a different VM type that provides full access.

I hope this information is helpful. Please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions.

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