Requirements to partition MI300X GPUs

Requirements to partition MI300X GPUs#

Partitioning AMD Instinct™ MI300X GPUs is a critical enabler for modern heterogeneous computing environments where isolation, resource sharing, and workload-specific optimization are paramount. By dividing a single physical GPU into multiple logical partitions, developers and system administrators can tailor computational resources to meet the unique performance, memory, and security demands of diverse applications—including large-scale AI inference, training, HPC simulations, and cloud-native deployments.

This document provides a comprehensive overview of the system, software, and firmware requirements needed to successfully configure and operate GPU partitioning on MI300X devices. Partitioning support for the MI300X platform is tightly integrated with the ROCm software stack and relies on both hardware-level and OS-level infrastructure. As such, careful attention must be given to platform readiness, including validated driver versions, kernel support, supported memory modes, and compatibility with partitioning utilities such as amd-smi.

Users should ensure their system environment meets all listed prerequisites prior to attempting partition configuration. Failure to do so may result in incomplete GPU enumeration, missing partitioning capabilities, or instability during execution.

This guide is intended for system integrators, developers, platform architects, and IT administrators tasked with deploying MI300X-based platforms in bare-metal, production-grade environments. All configurations, tools, and commands referenced herein have been validated on supported operating systems and are based on ROCm version 6.4 or newer.

Prerequisites#

  • AMD Instinct MI300X GPUs must be installed and recognized by the system.

  • ROCm software stack must be correctly installed.

  • Firmware and kernel must support partitioning (latest recommended).

  • amd-smi tool is required for runtime management.

  • Bare-metal OS installation—no virtualization layer.

System requirements#

To ensure successful partitioning with MI300X GPUs, confirm the following system requirements:

Hardware requirements#

  • GPU: AMD Instinct MI300X

Operating system requirements#

The following Linux distributions are recommended:

  • Ubuntu 22.04+, 24.04+

  • Oracle Linux Server 8.8+

To check the operating system version, run the following command.

uname -m && cat /etc/*release

x86_64
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=24.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=noble
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 24.04 LTS"
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 24.04 LTS"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION_ID="24.04"
VERSION="24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat)"
VERSION_CODENAME=noble
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian

... [output truncated]

Software requirements#

  • Linux kernel: version 5.15 or newer

To find the kernel version, run the following command.

# Check Linux kernel version
uname -srmv

Linux 6.8.0-31-generic #31-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sat Apr 20 00:40:06 UTC 2024 x86_64

  • amd-smi CLI: version 25.3.0 or newer

  • ROCm: version 6.4 or newer

  • AMD GPU Driver (amdgpu): version 6.12.12 (amdgpu-build 2120656) or newer

To find the AMD SMI, ROCm, and amdgpu driver versions, run amd-smi version or amd-smi.

amd-smi version

AMDSMI Tool: 26.2.1+fc0010cf6a | AMDSMI Library version: 26.2.1 | ROCm version: 7.2.0 | amdgpu version: 6.16.13 | hsmp version: N/A

amd-smi

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| AMD-SMI 26.2.1+fc0010cf6a    amdgpu version: 6.16.13  ROCm version: 7.2.0    |
| VBIOS version: 022.040.003.043.000001                                        |
| Platform: Linux Baremetal                                                    |
|-------------------------------------+----------------------------------------|

... [output truncated]

Note

This tabular amd-smi default view featuring version information was introduced with ROCm 7.0. If you’re using an older version, stick to amd-smi version.

Firmware requirements#

  • VBIOS: version 022.040.003.043.000001

To find the VBIOS version, run the following command.

amd-smi static --vbios

GPU: 0
    VBIOS:
        NAME: AMD MI300X_HW_SRIOV_CVS_1VF
        BUILD_DATE: 2024/10/17 16:32
        PART_NUMBER: 113-M3000100-103
        VERSION: 022.040.003.043.000001
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