Overview
Tesla K40 GPU Accelerator
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NVIDIA GPU BOOST ON TESLA K40
NVIDIA GPU Boost
™
is a feature available on Tesla K40. It makes use of any power
headroom to run the core clock to a higher frequency. Application workloads that have
power headroom can run at high GPU clocks to boost application performance.
Note: The memory clock remains constant at 3 GHz. It's likely that the effective
memory bandwidth utilization will change depending on the core clock frequency.
NVIDIA GPU Boost for HPC Workloads
NVIDIA GPU Boost for Tesla K40 is optimized to deliver a robust and deterministic
boost behavior for a wide range of HPC workloads.
Tesla K40 gives full control to end-users to select the core clock frequency that fits their
workload the best. The workload may have one or more of the following characteristics.
Problem set is spread across multiple GPUs and requires periodic synchronization.
Problem set spread across multiple GPUs and runs independent of each other.
Workload has “compute spikes.” For example, some portions of the workload are
extremely compute intensive pushing the power higher and some portions are
moderate.
Workload is compute intensive through-out without any spikes.
Workload requires fixed clocks and is sensitive to clocks fluctuating during the
execution.
Workload runs in a cluster where all GPUs need to start, finish, and run at the same
clocks.
Workload or end user requires predictable performance and repeatable results.
Datacenter is used to run different types of workload at different hours in a day to
better manage the power consumption.
Some boards in a cluster have access to better cooling than others.
By default the Tesla K40 ships with the core clock set to the base clock. HPC workloads
can have one or more characteristics as described. When selecting one of the supported
boost clocks a good strategy is to characterize the workload with the available boost
clocks. For example, DGEMM/Linpack are extremely demanding on power. Therefore,
the “base clock” may be the correct choice when running Linpack. Some workloads in
life sciences, manufacturing, CFD, CAD, etc., may have power headroom and can take
advantage of one of the boost clocks.
