GPU Burn

Document Scope

This document will provide a brief description of how to install and run GPU Burn, a tool used by Exxact to stress test GPUs. GPU Burn can be used to utilize your GPUs at a high threshold for a defined period of time which can allow you to confirm or eliminate potential GPU issues.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes the following:

• You have a CUDA capable GPU
• You have CUDA already installed
• You are running all commands below as root
• You have all the necessary compilers/tools for compiling and running code

Step 1: Download GPU Burn

GPU Burn can be downloaded by running the following:

git clone https://github.com/wilicc/gpu-burn

Step 2: Install GPU Burn

You will need to change into the gpu-burn directory and then run make to build the package.

cd gpu-burn
make

Step 3: Run GPU Burn

Usage: gpu_burn [OPTIONS] [TIME]

-m X Use X MB of memory
-m N% Use N% of the available GPU memory
-d Use doubles
-tc Try to use Tensor cores (if available)
-l List all GPUs in the system
-i N Execute only on GPU N
-h Show this help message

Example:
gpu_burn -d 3600

GPU Burn is a fairly straight forward tool and by default will run for ten seconds. Below you can find the  example output from a run for 30 seconds on a system with 8 NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPUs.

exx@tt19163:~/gpu-burn$ ./gpu_burn 30
Using compare file: compare.ptx
Burning for 30 seconds.
GPU 0: NVIDIA RTX A6000 (UUID: GPU-29a27c7b-cd4b-9728-9cdc-7102f77d4548)
GPU 1: NVIDIA RTX A6000 (UUID: GPU-a34186de-ecc3-56c6-0e8f-ff8cfa0cc7b2)
GPU 2: NVIDIA RTX A6000 (UUID: GPU-a733f3f6-b964-ca65-58ce-c7f32a13d7dc)
GPU 3: NVIDIA RTX A6000 (UUID: GPU-7209ddee-de68-a17a-f65b-ac0f42256c43)
GPU 4: NVIDIA RTX A6000 (UUID: GPU-fcf1f5ff-fc35-4cb4-fab0-dc9a5b6b6951)
GPU 5: NVIDIA RTX A6000 (UUID: GPU-b4e56019-e74d-298f-6c79-cdd64e15066e)
GPU 6: NVIDIA RTX A6000 (UUID: GPU-fbc6d802-bed5-9722-0929-a9cfd4d6b7bc)
GPU 7: NVIDIA RTX A6000 (UUID: GPU-12357f2c-fb85-9d97-90b0-a241510c022d)

(Removed initialization and testing summary outputs for brevity)

Tested 8 GPUs:
GPU 0: OK
GPU 1: OK
GPU 2: OK
GPU 3: OK
GPU 4: OK
GPU 5: OK
GPU 6: OK
GPU 7: OK
exx@tt19163:~/gpu-burn$