NP-series
Caution
This article references CentOS, a Linux distribution that is nearing End Of Life (EOL) status. Please consider your use and plan accordingly. For more information, see the CentOS End Of Life guidance.
Applies to: ✔️ Linux VMs ✔️ Windows VMs ✔️ Flexible scale sets ✔️ Uniform scale sets
The NP-series virtual machines are powered by Xilinx U250 FPGAs for accelerating workloads including machine learning inference, video transcoding, and database search & analytics. NP-series VMs are also powered by Intel Xeon 8171M (Skylake) CPUs with all core turbo clock speed of 3.2 GHz.
Premium Storage: Supported
Premium Storage caching: Supported
Live Migration: Not Supported
Memory Preserving Updates: Not Supported
VM Generation Support: Generation 1
Accelerated Networking: Supported
Ephemeral OS Disks: Supported
Nested Virtualization: Not Supported
| Size | vCPU | Memory: GiB | Temp storage (SSD) GiB | FPGA | FPGA memory: GiB | Max data disks | Max NICs/ Expected network bandwidth (Mbps) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard_NP10s | 10 | 168 | 736 | 1 | 64 | 8 | 1 / 7500 |
| Standard_NP20s | 20 | 336 | 1474 | 2 | 128 | 16 | 2 / 15000 |
| Standard_NP40s | 40 | 672 | 2948 | 4 | 256 | 32 | 4 / 30000 |
Size table definitions
Storage capacity is shown in units of GiB or 1024^3 bytes. When you compare disks measured in GB (1000^3 bytes) to disks measured in GiB (1024^3) remember that capacity numbers given in GiB may appear smaller. For example, 1023 GiB = 1098.4 GB.
Disk throughput is measured in input/output operations per second (IOPS) and MBps where MBps = 10^6 bytes/sec.
Data disks can operate in cached or uncached modes. For cached data disk operation, the host cache mode is set to ReadOnly or ReadWrite. For uncached data disk operation, the host cache mode is set to None.
To learn how to get the best storage performance for your VMs, see Virtual machine and disk performance.
Expected network bandwidth is the maximum aggregated bandwidth allocated per VM type across all NICs, for all destinations. For more information, see Virtual machine network bandwidth.
Upper limits aren't guaranteed. Limits offer guidance for selecting the right VM type for the intended application. Actual network performance will depend on several factors including network congestion, application loads, and network settings. For information on optimizing network throughput, see Optimize network throughput for Azure virtual machines. To achieve the expected network performance on Linux or Windows, you may need to select a specific version or optimize your VM. For more information, see Bandwidth/Throughput testing (NTTTCP).
Frequently asked questions
Q: How to request quota for NP VMs?
A: Follow this page Increase VM-family vCPU quotas. NP VMs are available in East US, West US2, SouthCentral US, West Europe, SouthEast Asia, Japan East, and Canada Central.
Q: What version of Vitis should I use?
A: Xilinx recommends Vitis 2022.1, you can also use the Development VM marketplace options (Vitis 2022.1 Development VM for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and CentOS 7.8)
Q: Do I need to use NP VMs to develop my solution?
A: No, you can develop on-premises and deploy to the cloud. Make sure to follow the attestation documentation to deploy on NP VMs.
Q: What shell version is supported and how can I get the development files?
A: The FPGAs in Azure NP VMs support Xilinx Shell 2.1 (gen3x16-xdma-shell_2.1). See Xilinx Page Xilinx/Azure with Alveo U250 to get the development shell files.
Q: Which file returned from attestation should I use when programming my FPGA in an NP VM?
A: Attestation returns two xclbins, design.bit.xclbin and design.azure.xclbin. Use design.azure.xclbin.
Q: Where should I get all the XRT / Platform files?
A: Visit Xilinx's Microsoft-Azure site for all files.
Q: What Version of XRT should I use?
A: xrt_202210.2.13.479
Q: What is the target deployment platform?
A: Use the following platforms.
- xilinx-u250-gen3x16-xdma-platform-2.1-3_all
- xilinx-u250-gen3x16-xdma-validate_2.1-3005608.1
Q: Which platform should I target for development?
A: xilinx-u250-gen3x16-xdma-2.1-202010-1-dev_1-2954688_all
Q: What are the supported Operating Systems?
A: Xilinx and Microsoft have validated Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and CentOS 7.8.
Xilinx has created the following marketplace images to simplify the deployment of these VMs:
Xilinx Alveo U250 2022.1 Deployment VM Ubuntu18.04
Xilinx Alveo U250 2022.1 Deployment VM Ubuntu20.04
Xilinx Alveo U250 2022.1 Deployment VM CentOS7.8
Q: Can I deploy my Own Ubuntu / CentOS VMs and install XRT / Deployment Target Platform?
A: Yes.
Q: If I deploy my own Ubuntu18.04 VM then what are the required packages and steps?
A: Follow the guidance in Xilinx XRT documentation Xilinx XRT documentation
Install the following packages.
xrt_202210.2.13.479_18.04-amd64-xrt.deb
xrt_202210.2.13.479_18.04-amd64-azure.deb
xilinx-u250-gen3x16-xdma-platform-2.1-3_all_18.04.deb.tar.gz
xilinx-u250-gen3x16-xdma-validate_2.1-3005608.1_all.deb
Q: If I deploy my own Ubuntu20.04 VM then what are the required packages and steps?
A: Follow the guidance in Xilinx XRT documentation Xilinx XRT documentation
Install the following packages.
xrt_202210.2.13.479_20.04-amd64-xrt.deb
xrt_202210.2.13.479_20.04-amd64-azure.deb
xilinx-u250-gen3x16-xdma-platform-2.1-3_all_18.04.deb.tar.gz
xilinx-u250-gen3x16-xdma-validate_2.1-3005608.1_all.deb
Q: If I deploy my own CentOS7.8 VM then what are the required packages and steps?
A: Follow the guidance in Xilinx XRT documentation Xilinx XRT documentation
Install the following packages.
xrt_202210.2.13.479_7.8.2003-x86_64-xrt.rpm
xrt_202210.2.13.479_7.8.2003-x86_64-azure.rpm
xilinx-u250-gen3x16-xdma-platform-2.1-3.noarch.rpm.tar.gz
xilinx-u250-gen3x16-xdma-validate-2.1-3005608.1.noarch.rpm
Q: What are the differences between on-premise FPGAs and NP VMs?
A:
- Regarding XOCL/XCLMGMT:
On Azure NP VMs, only the role endpoint (Device ID 5005), which uses the XOCL driver, is present.
In on-premise FPGAs, both the management endpoint (Device ID 5004) and role endpoint (Device ID 5005), which use the XCLMGMT and XOCL drivers respectively, are present.
- Regarding XRT:
On Azure NP VMs, the XDMA 2.1 platform only supports Host_Mem(SB).
To enable Host_Mem(SB) (up to 1-Gb RAM): sudo xbutil host_mem --enable --size 1g
To disable Host_Mem(SB): sudo xbutil host_mem --disable
Starting on XRT2021.1:
On-premise FPGA in Linux exposes
M2M data transfer.
This feature isn't supported in Azure NP VMs.
Q: Can I run xbmgmt commands?
A: No, on Azure VMs there's no management support directly from the Azure VM.
Q: Do I need to load a PLP?
A: No, the PLP is loaded automatically for you, so there's no need to load via xbmgmt commands.
Q: Does Azure support different PLPs?
A: Not at this time. We only support the PLP provided in the deployment platform packages.
Q: How can I query the PLP information?
A: Need to run xbutil query and look at the lower portion.
Q: Do Azure NP VMs support FPGA bitstreams with Networking GT Kernel connections?
A: No. The FPGA Attestation service performs a series of validations on a design checkpoint file and will generate an error if the user's application contains connections to the FPGA card's QSFP networking ports.
Other sizes and information
- General purpose
- Memory optimized
- Storage optimized
- GPU optimized
- High performance compute
- Previous generations
Pricing Calculator: Pricing Calculator
For more information on disk types, see What disk types are available in Azure?
Next steps
Learn more about how Azure compute units (ACU) can help you compare compute performance across Azure SKUs.
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