GIM kernel module source code for GPU virtualization published in the public domain

AMD has published the GIM project code on GitHub. It is a module that implements GPU hardware virtualization and supports SR-IOV technology.

Single Root I/O Virtualization technology is needed to distribute physical device resources between virtual machines. Using GIM, VMs (virtual machines) can directly access GPU resources. This technology significantly impacts performance due to the absence of unnecessary layers while guaranteeing a high level of isolation.

The GIM project is published for everyone and is available under the MIT license. The code is written in C, and packages are available for Ubuntu 22.04.

At this stage, the driver can only function with AMD products that support resource sharing on MxGPUs. Moreover, support is announced for AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators, which are required for machine learning tasks in data centers and are needed for high-performance computing. There are also plans to use the module with a GPU in discrete graphics cards.

GIM module capabilities

GIM, along with KVM hypervisor-based virtualization, provides the following capabilities: GPU resource allocation between VMs, GPU-IOV initialization, Function Level Reset, enabling and configuring virtual functions, and matching the interaction between the physical device and virtual functions.