4. V-IPU tools

Note

The vipu command is only accessible on:

  • Graphcloud

  • Pod systems

4.1. About the tools

The Graphcore Virtual-IPU is a software layer for allocating and configuring IPUs. The V-IPU software provides a command line interface so you can request IPU resources to be allocated to run Poplar-based machine-learning applications.

The vipu command is the main interface to the V-IPU software.

You will usually only use vipu to monitor the status of the IPUs and, if necessary, reset them (Section 5, Troubleshooting).

Note

On Pod systems, you may need to use the vipu command to configure a partition. A partition is a software entity that defines a set of IPUs that are available for running user applications. Refer to the Partitions section in the V-IPU User Guide for more information on configuring a partition.

4.2. How to reset a partition

If using the gc-reset tool does not resolve the problem and you are using Graphcloud or a Pod system, then you can try to reset the V-IPU partition using the V-IPU command line interface.

Resetting the partition will:

  • ensure that the IPUoF software components are running on the IPU-Machines

  • configure the IPUs in the partition and the IPU links between them

To reset the partition:

  1. Identify the partition name (this is the first field of the output generated from the command shown below)

$ vipu -H localhost list partition

  1. Reset the partition

$ vipu -H localhost reset partition <partition_name>

  1. Check that the partition is ready for use

Resetting the partition can take a few minutes so you may need to repeat the following command a few times.

$ vipu -H localhost list partition

The partition is ready for use when the state is ACTIVE.

Refer to the V-IPU User Guide for more information.