macOS GPU resource sharing

[mzenz]

Is it possible to share GPU resources with Podman containers, similar to how Nvidia GPU resources can be shared with containers on Linux/Windows?

Please let us know, I haven't been able to find any info on how to do so.

[rhatdan]

We are working on this and it should be available in podman 5.1.

#22491

[fockem]

Is this future available right now because 5.1 is out now?

[rhatdan]

Well yes and know. You can switch to krunkit, but need to get the bugfix in podman 5.1.1

[rhatdan]

https://github.com/containers/podman/releases/tag/v5.1.1

[fockem]

So install version 5.1.1 and then with Krunkit I can have a container use GPU resources.

Do you have some tutorial for this?

[rhatdan]

Not that I know of.
@slp @baude @mheon Any ideas?

[slp]

I wrote a blog post about it, but it was from before support was merged into podman. Nowadays is much simpler:

1. Configure libkrun as provider. You can do this temporarily by exporting a environment variable (export CONTAINERS_MACHINE_PROVIDER="libkrun") or permanently by adding this to ~/.config/containers/containers.conf:

[machine]
  provider = "libkrun"

2. Create a VM for this provider the usual way (podman machine init).

Now you'll have on your podman VM some /dev/dri/* entries corresponding to the virtio-gpu device that provides GPU acceleration in the guest.

To make use of them, you still need a patched version of Mesa. We're working on getting this upstream (it's just two small fixes) to make it work with the Mesa version shipped with the distros. Meanwhile, please refer to the Running an AI workload offloaded to the GPU section of the blog post.

[tsailiming]

I'm on podman 5.1.1. When using libkrun as a provider, do we need to brew tap slp/krun?

I had to add krunkit otherwise podman will complain

$ podman machine start
Starting machine "podman-machine-default"
ERRO[0000] process 29635 has not ended
Error: exec: "krunkit": executable file not found in $PATH

This is what I have installed:

$ brew list --full-name | grep -i krun
slp/krunkit/krunkit
slp/krunkit/libkrun-efi
slp/krunkit/virglrenderer

[slp]

Yes, it's in the process of getting bundled: #23079

[sroecker]

I guess this can be marked as answered now since libkrun is bundled and the process is documented https://podman-desktop.io/docs/podman/gpu