CUDA: Memory copy to GPU 1 is slower in multi-GPU

Posted by zenna on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by zenna
Published on 2010-04-01T12:56:07Z Indexed on 2010/04/16 9:03 UTC
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My company has a setup of two GTX 295, so a total of 4 GPUs in a server, and we have several servers. We GPU 1 specifically was slow, in comparison to GPU 0, 2 and 3 so I wrote a little speed test to help find the cause of the problem.

//#include <stdio.h>
//#include <stdlib.h>
//#include <cuda_runtime.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <sstream>
#include <string>
#include <cutil.h>

__global__ void test_kernel(float *d_data) {
    int tid = blockDim.x*blockIdx.x + threadIdx.x;
    for (int i=0;i<10000;++i) {
        d_data[tid] = float(i*2.2);
        d_data[tid] += 3.3;
    }
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{

    int deviceCount;                                                         
    cudaGetDeviceCount(&deviceCount);
    int device = 0; //SELECT GPU HERE
    cudaSetDevice(device);


    cudaEvent_t start, stop;
    unsigned int num_vals = 200000000;
    float *h_data = new float[num_vals];
    for (int i=0;i<num_vals;++i) {
        h_data[i] = float(i);
    }

    float *d_data = NULL;
    float malloc_timer;
    cudaEventCreate(&start);
    cudaEventCreate(&stop); cudaEventRecord( start, 0 );
    cudaMemcpy(d_data, h_data, sizeof(float)*num_vals,cudaMemcpyHostToDevice);
    cudaMalloc((void**)&d_data, sizeof(float)*num_vals);
    cudaEventRecord( stop, 0 ); cudaEventSynchronize( stop ); cudaEventElapsedTime( &malloc_timer, start, stop );
    cudaEventDestroy( start );
    cudaEventDestroy( stop );


    float mem_timer;
    cudaEventCreate(&start);
    cudaEventCreate(&stop); cudaEventRecord( start, 0 );
    cudaMemcpy(d_data, h_data, sizeof(float)*num_vals,cudaMemcpyHostToDevice);
    cudaEventRecord( stop, 0 ); cudaEventSynchronize( stop ); cudaEventElapsedTime( &mem_timer, start, stop );
    cudaEventDestroy( start );
    cudaEventDestroy( stop );

    float kernel_timer;
    cudaEventCreate(&start);
    cudaEventCreate(&stop); cudaEventRecord( start, 0 );
    test_kernel<<<1000,256>>>(d_data);
    cudaEventRecord( stop, 0 ); cudaEventSynchronize( stop ); cudaEventElapsedTime( &kernel_timer, start, stop );
    cudaEventDestroy( start );
    cudaEventDestroy( stop );

    printf("cudaMalloc took %f ms\n",malloc_timer);
    printf("Copy to the GPU took %f ms\n",mem_timer);
    printf("Test Kernel took %f ms\n",kernel_timer);

    cudaMemcpy(h_data,d_data, sizeof(float)*num_vals,cudaMemcpyDeviceToHost);

    delete[] h_data;
    return 0;
}

The results are

GPU0 cudaMalloc took 0.908640 ms Copy to the GPU took 296.058777 ms Test Kernel took 326.721283 ms

GPU1 cudaMalloc took 0.913568 ms Copy to the GPU took[b] 663.182251 ms[/b] Test Kernel took 326.710785 ms

GPU2 cudaMalloc took 0.925600 ms Copy to the GPU took 296.915039 ms Test Kernel took 327.127930 ms

GPU3 cudaMalloc took 0.920416 ms Copy to the GPU took 296.968384 ms Test Kernel took 327.038696 ms

As you can see, the cudaMemcpy to the GPU is well double the amount of time for GPU1. This is consistent between all our servers, it is always GPU1 that is slow. Any ideas why this may be? All servers are running windows XP.

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