NVIDIA Community Advisor Program – deadline June 15th 2016 – seeking more diverse candidates!

NVIDIA has a good record on corporate diversity metrics

NVIDIA recently announced an Enterprise Community Advisor program (initially focused on the GRID and virtualized products). Applications for this remain open until Midnight (UK time) on 15^th June 2016. So still plenty of time to apply! You can read the program announcement and details on how to apply here: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/04/04/nvidia-grid/

To date we have over 30 applications of which 1 is female and 2 not from North America or _Northern_ EMEA (Scandinavia, UK, Germany, Netherlands, etc)….While applications will only be assessed on pure technical merit/experience to the criteria on the application form (see here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15EZEfjrR28ofHd8FU7lWWoiR_KETx-0mzy6an_ng424/viewform), I had hoped we’d have a more diverse gender and geographical set of candidates and I’m not sure why we don’t.

Could Deep Learning find the needle in the PDM/PLM haystacks or cloud?

Yowza at D3Live 2016!

Recently I attended the NVIDIA GTC Developers’ conference and spent a little time learning more about the deep learning products. A branch of machine learning that often aims to make better representations and create models to learn these representations from large-scale unlabeled data. Many of the use cases have been associated with text and image search, facial recognition or medical diagnosis (identifying specific cancers, medical problems).

NVIDIA GRID GPUs perfect for keeping up with the Raspberry Pi and the next generation of end points

Citrix have been making a fair bit of noise about their end-client (Receiver) being available and supported in-conjunction with partner ThinLinx on the Raspberry Pi, which with peripherals is proving a sub-$100 thin-client, capable of handling demanding graphics and frame rates (fps) of 30fps or more (YouTube is usually 30fps).

The Raspberry Pi and other low-cost end-points such as the Intel NUC are capable because they support hardware decode of protocols such as H.264 and JPEG used by HDX/ICA, they have SoC (system on a chip) hardware designed to handle graphics really very well.

NVIDIA GRID: New knowledge resources – just released!

The NVIDIA Knowledge base is going from strength to strength.  Since GRID moved to a software and fully-supported enterprise model there has been an acceleration in the information being published there that should carry on long-term.

Known issues, workarounds, how-to-guides and links to other places to find information on NVIDIA products including GRID and vGPU.

Yet MORE NEW articles have just been released:

NEW KB Articles – this week!

• A change occurs on the GRID licensing server such as IP address, or a change in account used to manage the licenses on the portal – resulting in error: FNE server is up and running”. May be necessary to delete the trusted store
• FAQs – VMware Blast Extreme and NVIDIA GRID – webinar 22nd March 2016
• End-point monitor / thin-client screen flickers when using NVIDIA GRID vGPU profile insufficient to support end-point native resolution
• Is the NVIDIA M60, K1, K2, K5000, other…. supported by vSphere/XenServer/Other Hypervisor?
• NVIDIA vGPU for XenServer is premium Citrix-licensed feature (includes errors/symptoms if licensing is incorrect)
• Monitoring NVIDIA GRID GPU and CPU metrics for Citrix XenServer including with XenCenter – including is the number of vCPUs per VM correct
• Incorrect BIOS settings on a server when used with a hypervisor can cause MMIO address issues that result in GRID GPUs failing to be recognized.
• Where to find the drivers for NVIDIA GRID 2.0 vGPU and up, including M60 and M6 drivers
• NVIDIA License Server – Changing default management port value
• Can NVIDIA Kepler (e.g. K1 / K2) and Maxwell (e.g. M60 / M6) GPU cards be mixed on a server host?

NEW KB Articles – last week

• Known Issues or Configuration Reasons: OpenGL/DirectX/GPU Acceleration Not Used when using GRID or Quadro products in virtualized environments including VMware and Citrix (links to multiple known issues in other vendors products)
• Monitoring the framebuffer for NVIDIA GRID vGPU and GPU-passthrough
• Autodesk AutoCAD 2016 selecting the wrong display adaptor
• AVID Media Composer requires a certified driver for use with a GPU/vGPU
• Enable GRID GPU acceleration for Adobe Illustrator 2014
• How to Query VBIOS when running vGPU
• What causes error: Source – NVWMI | Level – Warning | Instance and Method provider registration failed – (null) hr=0xFFFFFFFA (-6)?
• Having problems with new M6/M60 like VMs fail to power on, NVRM BAR1 error, ECC is enabled, or nvidia-smi fails (checking cards in graphics not compute mode)

As always I’d recommend a visit to the GRID user forums where you can ask questions with the users who include customers, partners and NVIDIA staff including developers who write the product and support staff: Have a look – HERE!

Where to find the drivers for NVIDIA GRID 2.0 vGPU and up, including M60 and M6 drivers

Quick blog, to highlight where you get GRID vGPU drivers and software for GRID 2.0 and higher. Whilst unsupported older products are available on the general NVIDIA download sites, newer products need to be obtained via the NVIDIA enterprise licensing portal.

Customers of GRID 2.0 and up NVIDIA products should receive access to an NVIDIA licensing portal account. Drivers for the GRID GPU cards such as the M6 and M60 can be obtained via this portal.

Two types of customers: 90 days evaluation (pre-sales), and paying customers

Evaluation Customers

1. Go to www.nvidia.com/grideval
2. Click “software download”
3. Fill in registration form
4. Get access to the NVIDIA licensing portal that will let you download 128 evaluation licenses and GRID software.

• If you are already registered, and need to return to the licensing portal, follow this link: https://nvidia.flexnetoperations.com/

 Paying Customers

1. The process is documented here: http://images.nvidia.com/content/pdf/grid/guides/quickstartguide.pdf
2. But just to capture the summary from this documentation

• When you purchase GRID, you receive email with PAK and registration link to the licensing portal.
• When you login to the portal, you get access to download all the licenses you have purchased along with GRID software.

Relevant Products:

Enterprise supported GRID vGPU drivers including M60 and M6 GPUs

VMWorld 2016 – VMware let users set the agenda! Go VMware!

VMware Democracy at VMworld – it seems you can vote for what sessions you’d like to see. I think this is a super idea as it allows the community, partners and customers to actually pre-screen the balance of talks and speakers.

This kind of openness where VMworld lets their community see what has been submitted (and subsequently rejected/accepted) is great. It allows others to be aware of potential speakers who whilst might not be suitable for VMworld may fit other events/platforms better. It’s also a very strong message that this conference is for the users. Go VMware!

NVIDIA GRID Knowledge Base – New Articles

Lots of answers and some fascinating tips and how-to-guides on NVIDIA GRID!

Have you visited the NVIDIA Knowledge base recently? Since GRID moved to a software and fully-supported enterprise model there has been an acceleration in the information being published there that should carry on long-term.

Known issues, workarounds, how-to-guides and links to other places to find information on NVIDIA products including GRID and vGPU.

NVIDIA GRID – May 2016 upcoming webinars

No boring recordings or scripted sales waffle on an NVIDIA webinar – just lots of real engineers and specialists willing to answer questions on the fly!

Golly gosh! There’s a lot of interest in GRID and GPU-sharing/virtualized graphics at the moment. So much so that the GRID team together with a number of partners are laying on a series of webinars to satisfy the demand for information stemming from recent VMware announcements and pre-Synergy interest around Citrix. So here’s a list for your diaries (even if you can’t make it – sign up and you will usually get sent the recording).

Dial “B” for Business – New vGPU profiles – Info online

The fury of a CTP at shoddy blog info!

Yesterday I wrote a blog about the new NVIDIA GRID vGPU profiles such as the M60-1B that allow 4 monitors under the NVIDIA GRID Virtual PC (vPC) product licensing, expanding the options and lowering the TCO to use shared GPU for 2D/office applications with demanding end-clients or monitor usage.

Almost as soon as I had published it, Citrix CTP Tobias Kreidl emailed me asking why I hadn’t linked to the documentation discussed. I had to confess it was because the documentation was from the product download and I hadn’t found it online. Hell hath no fury like the #OldestCTPInTheWorld! So I went hunting a bit harder.

Confessions of a VMware Secret Agent – NVIDIA GRID and Blast Extreme – answers!

I have a new secret double life! I’ve recently been involved in doing the live chat and Q&A from NVIDIA GRID webinars. If you never attended our webinars but you are interested in NVIDIA GRID technologies you should consider trying it. They usually take the format of a 1+ hour Webinar hosted by internal technology specialists like Support, Readiness or Product Management. We will show live demos, hints and best practices. And also we have regular Guest Speakers or partners involved.

Our next webinar is on Thursday 12^th May 2016 (8am PST/11AM EST/4PM UK): “See How Virtual GPU Technology Can Increase User Productivity and Reduce IT Cost.”

• SIGN UP >> HERE