NVIDIA Turing adaptation of gpu-unlock

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Tensor cores draw very high power. Unlocking them to full speed may damage your hardware. Use at your own risk.

This is a Linux kernel module. It unlocks the full speed FP16 tensor core of the NVIDIA TU102 GPU.

The module writes two speed selectors. SS0 becomes 0x88888888. SS1 becomes 0x8. The payload also releases ACR mutex 3. Then the GPU returns through the normal Booter finalize path.

Tested on the Dell RTX 2080 Ti 22GB (10de:1e07) with NVIDIA driver 575.51.03. Both the proprietary driver and the open driver work. Other cards or other driver is not tested.

TFLOPS of cuBALS FP16 matrix multiply with FP32 Accumulate on RTX 2080 Ti @250W

100%peak = 56.9 TFLOPS, claimed in NVIDIA Turing Architecture Whitepaper

Run these commands:

cd turing-unlock
make install

make install finds your distribution. It builds and installs the packages. You can also choose the package type:

make install-arch   # Arch
make install-deb    # Debian or Ubuntu
make install-rpm    # Fedora or RHEL

make arch, make deb, and make rpm only build the packages. The output goes to build/deb and build/rpm.

The build downloads two pinned NVIDIA files. It checks their SHA-256 hashes. The files stay in ~/.cache/turing-unlock/inputs. Use make inputs to download them first. Use INPUTS= to set another cache directory.

The module does nothing by default. Add one option to the kernel command line:

turing_unlock.targets=all

You can select cards by PCI address instead:

turing_unlock.targets=0000:21:00.0
turing_unlock.targets=0000:21:00.0,0000:22:00.0

lspci -D prints the full address. Use that name. Case does not matter.

Add the option like this:

• GRUB (Debian/Ubuntu): edit GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub. Run sudo update-grub.
• GRUB (Arch): edit the same file. Run sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
• Fedora/RHEL: run sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="turing_unlock.targets=all".
• systemd-boot: add the option to the boot entry. Run bootctl status to find the entry file.
• UKI: add the option to /etc/kernel/cmdline. Rebuild the boot images.

Then reboot your system and check the result:

journalctl -k -b | grep turing_unlock

The packages put turing_unlock and its firmware in the initramfs. The module loads before nvidia can bind a card. The packages add config files for these tools:

• mkinitcpio: /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.d/zz-turing-unlock.conf
• initramfs-tools: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/modules.d/turing-unlock.conf
• dracut: /usr/lib/dracut/dracut.conf.d/turing-unlock.conf

The packages rebuild the initramfs on install and on removal.

The module skips a card with a driver. It also skips a powered-down card. TU102 cards run one at a time. The module checks the card state. If needed, it does a PCIe FLR first. Then nvidia loads and binds the card as usual.

The unlock does not reset the card when it succeeds. A failed step may reset the card. The screen then stays blank until nvidia-drm takes over.

If the GPU firmware does not stop, the module logs an error. It keeps the DMA buffers until the next power off. Power off the machine before you try again.

The module and the packaging use GPL-2.0-only. The firmware keeps its NVIDIA license. See firmware/NOTICE.md and licenses/.