topic Re: Re:Battlemage support for virtualization in Intel® Arc™ Discrete Graphics

Battlemage support for virtualization

pseudomotivated — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 17:12:28 GMT

With the release of B series Arc GPUs recently I was considering one for my rig, for that I am wondering about whether they support virtualization. And in that case what technology etc, as I found nothing on Battlemage specifically here.

Thank you for your time.

Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

JeanetteC_Intel — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 09:01:13 GMT

Hello pseudomotivated,

Thank you for posting in Intel Communities.

I'll check on this query and I will post an update once it's available.

Best regards,

JeanetteC.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

Re: Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

Bandit8623 — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 07:46:36 GMT

I am Also curious. I tried to passthrough an a380 but no support and doesn't work. Would be good if Battlemage supported sriov or gpu -p

Re: Battlemage support for virtualization

Flolingo — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:00:33 GMT

I also tried it with an a770 in proxmox. It worked but schutting down the vm crashes the host. I hope Battlemage will support this and a driver update for the alchemist gpus would also be nice. Nvidia and Amd both support it so why not intel?

Re: Battlemage support for virtualization

Bandit8623 — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 04:51:04 GMT

@Flolingo

yeah i had luck with Gpu-p but it would not pass media engine through properly. i could see the gpu but no luck with transcoding.

also on my newer system if i enable sr-iov i cant get my system to boot with the A380 installed into bare metal windows.

Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

JeanetteC_Intel — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 21:50:11 GMT

Hello Bandit8623 and Flolingo,

I understand that you are facing the same situation, however, I kindly request that you create a new thread for your case. This will allow us to focus on your specific problem and provide you with better assistance.

Sincerely,

JeanetteC.

Intel Customer Support Technician

Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

JeanetteC_Intel — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 21:51:23 GMT

Hello pseudomotivated,

Good day.

As confirmed in article https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000093216/graphics/processor-graphics.html the Intel® Arc™ B-Series discrete graphics do not support virtualization technologies.

Intel won't discuss the reasons behind this situation.

I hope this answers your question.

Best regards,

JeanetteC.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

Re: Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

Bandit8623 — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 21:51:48 GMT

Jean you haven't answered the ops question. Our question is the same. Thanks.

Re: Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

Bandit8623 — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 22:11:17 GMT

Looks like people who want support need to buy AMD or Nvidia GPUs.. sad Intel.. sad

Re: Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

Flolingo — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 23:12:46 GMT

Yes, very sad. Why doesn't intel give any reason? Will they get support in the future? I don't know much about this topic but I assume it's just a driver thing, because without the intel driver installed in the vm, it works fine. If that is the case then intel has done very weak.

Re: Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

Bandit8623 — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 23:26:08 GMT

Yes definitely a driver thing. Nvidia learned their lesson on transcoding limitations a few years back. Guess Intel is still in baby stages. When you open your hardware up you sell more hardware.

Re: Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

Heloc — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 00:57:35 GMT

Kinda a bummer, a hardware limitation. Or just a "software isn't implemented" case?

Re: Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

Bandit8623 — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 01:35:27 GMT

@Heloc its a driver limitation. you can passthrough the entire card with some hypervisors, but sr-iov isnt not supported because the driver has to support in that case. PCI passthrough has been available since at least February 2015

Re: Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

Heloc — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 03:15:11 GMT

So, SR-IOV is implementable for Arc cards in the Xe driver, neat.

What I don't understand is why they are implementing it on iGPUs but not consumer dGPUs, there isn't a whole lot of compute resources to be shared with iGPUs. And it's not like they haven't done SR-IOV on dGPUs (Intel® Data Center GPU Flex Series discrete graphics family).

Re: Re:Battlemage support for virtualization

Bandit8623 — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 03:27:31 GMT

@Heloc they have a pro line they are selling that has the option they want data centers to buy those not the consumer ones. They could support sr-iov if they wanted too.