Intel & AMD Send Out New Patches For Linux Cgroup Support For GPUs
For a long time now there have been patches floating around for prepping Cgroup infrastructure around DRM drivers / graphics processors. This work would make it possible to monitor and limit GPU resources just as you can use cgroups for such on CPUs. This work could also be used for restricting video memory to a set of processes, among other possible restrictions.
AMD has similarly been interested in this for data centers for limiting/controlling GPU resources without resorting to GPU virtualization. By using DRM cgroup controllers they could provide fine-grained resource management that up to now is only really suitable with SR-IOV GPU virtualization.
It's looking like this infrastructure work could be getting closer to finally reaching the mainline Linux kernel. Intel sent out the latest cgroup support patches for GPU devices though their patches only implement the support for the i915 DRM driver and is limited to handling device memory limits at this stage. These newest Intel patches use a slightly different design than their code from 2018. Obviously Intel will become much more interested in this functionality as their Xe Graphics discrete hardware nears.
AMD meanwhile sent out new patches for wiring in device cgroups up to their AMDKFD driver for the GPU compute stack.
This work is too late to see reviewed and agreed upon for the upcoming Linux 5.2 cycle, but we can hold out hope for seeing the work land for Linux 5.3.
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