GPU Checkpointing

This page explains how CRIU handles GPU-accelerated workloads, what vendor components are needed (NVIDIA & AMD), and how to use them for processes and containers. For more information, check out the CRIUgpu paper, NVIDIA's blog post, and AMD conference talks at LPC and X.Org.

How CRIU integrates with GPU checkpointing mechanisms?

CRIU checkpoints Linux-kernel resources (e.g., memory, threads, files, sockets). GPU state such as device memory, contexts, and queues that lives outside normal process address space needs special handling, so CRIU relies on vendor-specific plugins.

CUDA Plugin

The checkpointing functionality for CUDA applications is enabled through a command-line utility called cuda-checkpoint. This utility allows to transparently checkpoint and restore the GPU state of a running Linux process.