FinGraV: Methodology for Fine-Grain GPU Power Visibility and Insights

Abstract

Ubiquity of AI makes optimizing GPU power a priority as large GPU-based clusters are often employed to train and serve AI models. An important first step in optimizing GPU power consumption is high-fidelity and fine-grain power measurement of key AI computations on GPUs. To this end, we observe that as GPUs get more powerful, the resulting sub-millisecond to millisecond executions make fine-grain power analysis challenging. In this work, we first carefully identify the challenges in obtaining fine-grain GPU power profiles. To address these challenges, we devise FinGraV methodology where we employ execution time binning, careful CPU-GPU time synchronization, and power profile differentiation to collect fine-grain GPU power profiles across prominent AI computations and across a spectrum of scenarios. Using the said FinGraV power profiles, we provide both, guidance on accurate power measurement and, in-depth view of power consumption on state-of-the-art AMD Instinct MI300X. For the former, we highlight a methodology for power differentiation across executions. For the latter, we make several observations pertaining to GPU sub-component power consumption and GPU power proportionality across different scenarios. We believe that FinGraV unlocks both an accurate and a deeper view of power consumption of GPUs and opens up avenues for power optimization of these ubiquitous accelerators.