nvidia-smi (also known as NVSMI) provides monitoring and management capabilities for each of NVIDIA’s Tesla, Quadro and GRID devices from Fermi and higher architecture families. Very limited information is also provided for GeForce devices. It’s based on top of the NVIDIA Management Library (NVML), which helps users manage and monitor NVIDIA GPU devices.
NVSMI is a cross platform tool that supports all standard NVIDIA driver-supported Linux distros.
The command line utility tool is installed with the NVIDIA drivers and is probably the monitoring tool that most users are familiar with. We can perform live monitoring using watch and nvidia-smi together e.g.
$ watch -n0.1 nvidia-smi
nvidia-smi is quite basic. This article explores other useful NVIDIA GPU monitoring tools.
Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. All the software is free and open source.
Let’s explore the tools at hand. For each application we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, a screenshot of the program in action, together with links to relevant resources.
| NVIDIA GPU Monitoring Tools | |
|---|---|
| NVTOP | (h)top like task monitor for AMD, Intel and NVIDIA GPUs |
| nvitop | Bills itself as “the one-stop solution for GPU process management” |
| LACT | Configures and monitors AMD, NVIDIA and Intel GPUs |
| GPU Hot | Real-time NVIDIA GPU monitoring dashboard |
| gpustat | Query and monitor GPU status |
| NVDashboard | JupyterLab extension for displaying dashboards of GPU usage |
| nv-monitor | Lightweight terminal-based monitoring application |
| nvidia-htop | Enriches the output of nvidia-smi |
| GPU-T | Display graphics card specifications, sensors and API support |
| gptop | Cross-platform GPU monitor |
| all-smi | Monitor GPUs, NPUs and system resources |
| NVIDIA System Monitor | Task manager monitoring your GPU |
| siltide | Monitor AI accelerator activity, processes and device health |
| NviWatch | Monitor NVIDIA GPUs and manage running processes |
This article has been updated to reflect the changes outlined in our recent announcement.
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