enabling all avialiable GPU for openCL

[angelous4x]

Hi all, 

is it possible or a way to enable all my GPUs for OpenCL?

i have 3x titan-x and a quadro m4000 total of 4 cards. 

 

thanks

[lukeiamyourfather]

Unless things have changed recently you can use only one device. Though you can load other instances of Houdini with different OpenCL devices and run them concurrently working on different simulations. See the documentation for the environment variable to define the device to use.

[sanostol]

You can use the slicing method to distribute it on 2 gpus, but You have to set it up on Your own. just launch every batch for sim with a differen GPUDEVICE variable

[angelous4x]

thanks guys (epic beard Luke)

@luke

I might change my main device to a non-used on used one. could I change my gpu device variable within the text port or it has to be in the environment variables file?

@Martin

is there a tutorial that I can do the slicing method to distribute on gpus? I am still a total peon, and getting a slow grasp on Houdini. 

 

thanks

[Guest tar]

I've only heard of env var 'HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICENUMBER' for changing the GPU device

 

HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICENUMBER
    In the case of multiple OpenCL devices existing of the type specified by
    HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICETYPE, this variable selects which of these devices to
    use for OpenCL processing.  For example, with a computer with more than
    one GPU this allows selection of a GPU other than the default for OpenCL.

 

[lukeiamyourfather]

3 hours ago, angelous4x said:

I might change my main device to a non-used on used one. could I change my gpu device variable within the text port or it has to be in the environment variables file?

Open a terminal, set the variable, then launch the Houdini instance. Exactly how you do this depends on the platform you're using.

[angelous4x]

thank you, i got it as my main device now HOUDINI _OCL_DEVICENUMBER = 3,  but when I get an error it says device 0

[ikoon]

Hello,
please, did you manage to automate the distribution of OpenCL calculations to all your GPUs? I also have 4 gpus in one computer now. Is there any management system, which could help me distribute this HOUDINI _OCL_DEVICENUMBER and run more instances of Houdini simultaneously, each calculating distributed slice on one computer?

I am into buying ThinkBox Deadline, as it can distribute GPU render (1 frame : 1 gpu) in one computer, but it can't manage this OpenCL 1:1, as far as I have searched.

Edited May 25, 2017 by ikoon

[Chats]

Hi there!

I know this thread is old now, but ikoon I was wondering if you ended up being able to use Deadline to manage multiple slaves with each using a different GPU for OpenCL device for Houdini simulations?

I have multiple GPUs in my machine, and would like to assign a different one to each slave for OpenCL Houdini simulations..

[ikoon]

Hi Mark, unfortunately I don't know how to distribute one OpenCL simulation to multiple GPUs in one computer. I think, that Deadline cannot help to distribute one OpenCL sim to multiple GPUs, as long as Houdini can utilize only one GPU. Simulations rely on previous sim frame.

But maybe you could split the sim into more clusters, or slices, and try to distribute those?

EDIT: the sim usually relies heavily on the CPU, so I think that the benefit of second GPU being used is not that significant. But of course, I am also curious about the future development.

Edited February 6, 2020 by ikoon