Multi-GPU or how to choose a particular GPU

[mcastrorennes]

Hi,

I have a confusion in the use of the GPUs. the function Neural_Network use le variable gpu_number (version 0.34), but if the GPU=0 is busy and I get an error. The last version of miscnn use the variable multi_gpu=boolean.

Could you explain to me how to set the use of a particular gpu.

Thank

[muellerdo]

Hey @mcastrorennes,

the old parameter gpu_number of the Neural_Network class defines the number of gpus which will be used in parallel for multi-gpu usage. So a single model training uses multiple gpu's in order to speed up the process.

The Neural Network class used the Keras 'multi_gpu_model' function in which you can specify how many gpus you want to use. Now, this function is deprecated and was replaced with the MirroredStrategy from Tensorflow, which works more like a boolean on/off switch. Therefore, I replaced the Neural_Network class parameter gpu_number (int, by default=1) with the new variable multi_gpu (boolean, by default False).

References:
https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/keras/utils/multi_gpu_model
https://www.tensorflow.org/api_docs/python/tf/distribute/MirroredStrategy
frankkramer-lab/MIScnn#44

Specify a single or multiple particular GPUs:

Could you explain to me how to set the use of a particular gpu.

If you have multiple GPUs in your cluster, let's say we have 4 GPUs, but the first two GPUs (0 & 1) are already in use by your colleague, than you have to tell your system to use only the last 2 GPUs (2 & 3).

How can we do this:

-> Via Bash:

# Define the environment variable CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES with a single GPU id
export CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=2

# Or for multiple GPU ids
export CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=2,3

-> Via Python and environment variables at the start of the script:

import os
# Single GPU ID 2
os.environ["CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES"] = "2"

# Multiple GPUs (2 & 3)
os.environ["CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES"] = "2,3"

Be aware that the Python variant requires that the ids are provided as string.

-> Via Python with Tensorflow:
Check out this:
https://www.tensorflow.org/guide/gpu#using_a_single_gpu_on_a_multi-gpu_system

Hope that I was able to help you.

Cheers,
Dominik