An evaluation of CUDA-enabled virtualization solutions

Virtualization, as a technology that enables easy and effective resource sharing with a low cost and energy footprint, is becoming increasingly popular not only in enterprises but also in high performance computing. Applications with stringent performance needs often make use of graphics processors for accelerating their computations. Hence virtualization solutions that support GPU acceleration are gaining importance. This paper performs a detailed evaluation of three frameworks: rCUDA, gVirtuS and Xen, which support GPU acceleration through CUDA, within a virtual machine. We describe the architectures of these three solutions and compare and contrast them in terms of their fidelity, performance, multiplexing and interposition characteristics.