GPU Software Bill Of Materials (SBOM)

This page will keep a running list of components used to achieve GPU Virtualization.

An absence of critical technical documentation has historically slowed growth and adoption of developer ecosystems for GPU virtualization.

This CC-BY-4.0 licensed content can either be used with attribution, or used as inspiration for new documentation, created by GPU vendors for public commercial distribution as developer documentation.

Where possible, this documentation will clearly label dates and versions of observed-but-not-guaranteed behaviour vs. vendor-documented stable interfaces/behaviour with guarantees of forward or backward compatibility.

Component Table

Vendor	Component	Description	Version	OSS or Blob	Filesize	Vendor Docs	Release Date	Interfaces / APIs	Notes
Microsoft	Indirect Display Driver (IDD)	Driver		OSS		Indirect Display Driver Overview		UMDF, KMDF	The Indirect Display Driver (IDD) enables GPUs to render graphics at arbitrary resolutions without a physical display connected on Windows OS systems.
RedHat	vfio_pci	Driver	6.2-rc1	OSS	in-kernel	RedHat, kernel.org	2022.12.15	irqfd, ioeventfd, IOCTL	Reference VFIO Stub driver used for discrete assignment of IO, and assignment of some SR-IOV-backed vGPU devices into virtual machines. This driver is commonly replaced with a vendor built VFIO interface with differing memory management and/or page pinning mechanisms which are specific to the vGPU software internals.
	Mediated Core (mdev.ko)	Driver	6.2-rc1	OSS	0.044 MB	kernel.org	2016.xx.xx	irqfd, ioeventfd, IOCTL, Type 1 IOMMU	The Mediated Core driver provides a common interface for mediated device management that can be used by drivers of different devices. It is an IOMMU/device-agnostic framework for exposing direct device access to user space in a secure, IOMMU-protected environment (based on VFIO).
Arc Compute	gvm-guest	Daemon	0.1.0	OSS		docs.linux-gvm.org/gvm-guest	2023.02.08	Virtio-Serial, CLI	Handles IO to and from guests and the host using Virtio-Serial to handle multiple different guest modules.
	gvm-cli		1.0	OSS	0.084 MB	docs.linux-gvm.org/gvm-user	2023.01.06	CLI, IOCTL, RMAPI, Mediated Core	Configures the the nvidia-vgpu-mgr process.
Intel	i915 SR-IOV	Driver	5.15	OSS	in-kernel				Intel's open source GPU driver for GuC-equipped graphics accelerators.
	GuC μOS	Firmware		Blob				IOMMU Interrupts, Power Management Interrupts, GTT	Handles scheduling, and power management.
	HuC							GTT	Handles video encoding/decoding.
	Display Virtualization for Windows OS	Driver	791	OSS		github.com/intel/Display-Virtualization-for-Windows-OS/blob/main/Readme.txt		udmabuf, UMDF, KMDF	Intel's 'Display Virtualization for Windows OS' provides a virtual pixel surface used for hardware graphics rendering using Microsoft's open source 'Indirect Display Driver (IDD)'. Display virtualization for Windows OS makes use of display memory sharing primitives provided in-driver by the i915 host.
Nvidia	OpenRM	Driver	525.85.12	OSS		github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/blob/main/README.md	2023.01.31		Nvidia's open source GPU driver for GSP-equipped graphics accelerators.
	GSP RM (uproc)	Firmware		Blob			2023.01.31	RPC	Embedded firmware based on LibOS containing the RM Core.
	Falcon/NvRISC (uproc)							FBIF (Frame Buffer Interface) / GMMU	Embedded firmware which handles many aspects of the device including configuring the GPU's GMMU controller.
	nvidia-vgpud	Daemon	v15.2	Blob	0.108 MB	docs.nvidia.com/grid	2023.01.xx	CLI, IOCTL, RMAPI, Mediated Core	Configures the the nvidia-vgpu-mgr process.
	nvidia-vgpu-mgr				0.132 MB		2023.01.xx	vmiop, IOCTL, RMAPI, vRPC, pRPC, Mediated Core	Handles IO to and from guest RM, host RM, and hardware.
	libnvidia-vgpu.so	Library			3.1 MB		2023.01.xx	vmiop, RMAPI, Mediated Core	Handles IO to and from guest RM, host RM, and hardware. Contains circular dependancies with nvidia-vgpu-mgr.
	nvidia-vgpu-vfio.ko	Driver			0.108 MB		2023.01.xx	Type 1 IOMMU, irqfd, ioeventfd, IOCTL, Mediated Core	Handles incremental memory mapping (non-page pinning per the standard vfio-pci driver).

More Information

1. Nvidia RISC-V Story
2. linux-gvm.org
3. Intel Graphics Programmer's Reference Manuals (PRM)
4. i915: Hardware Contexts (and some bits about batchbuffers)
5. i915: The Global GTT Part 1
6. i915: Aliasing PPGTT Part 2
7. i915: True PPGTT Part 3
8. i915: Future PPGTT Part 4 (Dynamic page table allocations, 64 bit address space, GPU "mirroring", and yeah, something about relocs too)
9. i915: Security of the Intel Graphics Stack - Part 1 - Introduction
10. i915: Security of the Intel Graphics Stack - Part 2 - FW <-> GuC
11. i915: An Introduction to Intel GVT-g (with new architecture)