power: RETRACT the DCGM caveat — config management and power limits ARE supported on our cards
I claimed in 100670e that DCGM's config enforcement was plausibly gated to datacenter
SKUs and told the operator not to plan around it. That was a guess presented as a caveat
and it is wrong. Verified against NVIDIA's own documentation at the operator's request.
Supported platforms explicitly cover 'All NVIDIA Maxwell and newer non-datacenter (e.g.
NVIDIA GeForce or NVIDIA Quadro) GPUs', and the feature-overview table marks
Configuration Management as supported for Tesla, Titan, Quadro and GeForce alike --
where Configuration Management explicitly includes 'Power Limit: Set the maximum allowed
power consumption'. What is actually gated on non-datacenter cards is diagnostics: Level
1 only, against All Levels on Tesla. Configuration was never the restricted part.
One soft edge retained rather than papered over: the table says 'Quadro', the former name
for the professional line, and RTX 6000 Ada / RTX PRO 6000 are its successors, so placing
them in that column is inference rather than quotation. One command on the box settles it.
What does not change is the distribution question. DCGM_CONFIG_POWER_BUDGET_GROUP is
available to us, but the docs still never state how a group budget is divided, and the
NVML argument is untouched -- there is no bank-level register, so it resolves to per-GPU
writes either way and the likely finding is static even division, which is exactly
4 x 250 W. The experiment is therefore promoted from curiosity back to a real test.
This commit is contained in:
@@ -510,13 +510,32 @@ control loop rather than a hardware feature.
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Its "group" notion is therefore a management-layer abstraction over per-GPU NVML calls,
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which is why the bank budget still resolves to N per-GPU writes underneath.
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⚠⚠ **DO NOT PLAN AROUND DCGM HERE. It is datacenter-oriented and parts of it are gated
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to datacenter SKUs** (Tesla / A100 / H100 class). Our cards are **professional /
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workstation** parts — RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q and RTX 6000 Ada — and several DCGM
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capabilities are unsupported or degraded outside the datacenter line, plausibly including
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**config enforcement, which is exactly the power path**. The
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`DCGM_CONFIG_POWER_BUDGET_GROUP` experiment may simply return "unsupported on this
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device": five minutes of curiosity after the real work, not a planning assumption.
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✅ **VERIFIED 2026-09-13 — DCGM DOES SUPPORT OUR CARDS, and an earlier caveat in this
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runbook claiming otherwise was WRONG and has been removed.**
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Supported platforms, quoted: *"All NVIDIA Maxwell™ and newer **non-datacenter** (e.g.
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NVIDIA® GeForce® or NVIDIA® Quadro®) GPUs"* — plus *"Starting with v1.3, limited DCGM
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functionality is available on non-datacenter GPUs."*
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And the feature-overview table settles what "limited" excludes — **not** configuration:
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Feature Group Tesla Titan Quadro GeForce
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Configuration Management X X X X
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Configuration Management explicitly includes *"Power Limit: Set the maximum allowed power
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consumption."* The thing actually gated on non-datacenter cards is **diagnostics**:
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GPU Diagnostics (Levels 1,2,3): All Levels [Tesla]; Level 1 [Titan/Quadro/GeForce]
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⚠ **One soft edge:** the table says "Quadro", the former name for the professional line.
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RTX 6000 Ada and RTX PRO 6000 are its successors and should fall in that column, but the
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table predates the rename — so that last step is inference, settled by one command on the
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box.
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⭐ **So the group-budget test is worth actually running**, not a curiosity. What it does
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NOT settle is *distribution*: the docs still never say how a group budget is divided, and
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the NVML argument is untouched — no bank-level register means per-GPU writes either way,
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so the likely finding is static even division (= 4 x 250 W).
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✅ **The static cap needs none of this.** `nvidia-smi -pl 250` is plain NVML and works on
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these cards. DCGM would only buy the group-budget experiment and richer telemetry, and is
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