Compare with MIG/MPS/Timeslicing

NVIDIA MIG (Multi-Instance GPU) provides basic GPU partitioning, allowing up to 7 instances per GPU card, but is limited to Ampere architecture and newer.

NVIDIA's MPS (Multi-Process Service) and Timeslicing features offer simple GPU sharing for multiple processes. However, they lack error isolation and cannot effectively limit CUDA/TensorCore & VRAM resources. Furthermore, Timeslicing has proven inadequate due to its complete lack of resource control.

TensorFusion offers end-to-end GPU virtualization, pooling solution, support almost all industrial in-use NVIDIA GPU models, it's far more than a GPU partitioning tool.

Features

Feature	TensorFusion	MIG + MPS	Comment
Basic Features
Fractional GPU	✅	✅	Can not exceed 7 sub-gpus using MIG
GPU Pooling	✅	❌	Not possible, relies on nvidia-gpu-operator for basic GPU node mgmt.
GPU Scheduling & Allocation	✅	❌	Single device level allocation based on Kubernetes native scheduler
Remote GPU Sharing	✅	❌	Not possible
Advanced Features
Seamless Onboarding for Existing Workloads	✅	❌	Require manual configuration
Monitoring & Alert	✅	❌
GPU Resource Oversubscription	✅	❌
GPU VRAM Expansion and hot/warm/cold tiering	✅	❌
GPU-first Autoscaling Policies	✅	❌
Support different QoS levels	🚧	❌
Request Multiple vGPUs	🚧	❌
GPU Node Auto Provisioning/Termination	✅	❌
GPU Compaction/Bin-packing	🚧	❌
IDE Extensions & Plugins	🚧	❌
Centralized Dashboard & Control Plane	✅	❌
Support AMD GPU	🚧	❌
Support HuaweiAscend/Cambricon and other GPU/NPU	🚧	❌
Enterprise Features
GPU Live Migration	🚧	❌
Advanced observability, CUDA Call Profiling/Tracing	🚧	❌
AI Model Preloading	🚧	❌
Advanced auto-scaling policies, scale to zero, rebalancing	🚧	❌
Monetization of your GPU cluster	🚧	❌

Notes:

• ✅ means supported
• ❌ means not supported
• 🚧 means Working in progress
• ❓ means unknown
• 👋 means not necessary any more

In essence, while MIG+MPS is NVIDIA's official method for GPU partitioning and sharing, it has significant limitations. It's overly complex, lacks fine-grained resource control, doesn't support oversubscription or remote GPU sharing, and requires the nvidia-gpu-operator in Kubernetes environments.

TensorFusion provides a more comprehensive feature set and a smoother onboarding process. It offers powerful capabilities with a user-friendly approach.

A another key distinction is: MIG+MPS is tied to specific GPU hardware and software interfaces, whereas TensorFusion is designed to be vendor and hardware agnostic.

Deploy & Usage

NVIDIA MIG and MPS requires manual planning and configuration, learning curve is high.

TensorFusion has less dependencies and offers full-fledged control plane to operator the GPU/NPU cluster for both community and commercial users.

Let's compare the usage between these solutions:

# NVIDIA MIG+MPS Pod Template
spec:
  volumes:
    - name: nvidia-mps
      hostPath:
        path: /tmp/nvidia-mps
  containers:
    - name: python
      image: ...
      env:
        - name: CUDA_MPS_PIPE_DIRECTORY
          value: "/tmp/nvidia-mps"
        - name: CUDA_MPS_LOG_DIRECTORY
          value: "/tmp/nvidia-log"
      resources:
        limits:
          nvidia.com/mig-2g.10gb: 1 // [!code highlight]
---
# Plus a manual configured MIG profile
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: nvidia-mig-config
  namespace: kube-system
data:
  config.yaml: |
    version: v1
    sharing:
      mps:
        resources:
          - name: nvidia.com/mig-3g.20gb
            replicas: 1
          - name: nvidia.com/mig-2g.10gb
            replicas: 2
    mig-configs:
      # Complex resource planning and manual configuration 
      all-3g.20gb-2g.10gb:
        - devices: ["0"]
          mig-enabled: true
          mig-devices:
            - profile: "3g.20gb"
              count: 1
            - profile: "2g.10gb"
              count: 2

TensorFusion doesn't require Kubernetes Device Plugin nor MPS Service DaemonSet, just add annotations in PodTemplate, much simpler and more flexible.

# TensorFusion
metadata:
  labels:
    tensor-fusion.ai/enabled: 'true'
  annotations:
    tensor-fusion.ai/workload-profile: example-workload-profile // [!code highlight]
    # you can override profile fields
    tensor-fusion.ai/vram-limit: 4Gi // [!code highlight]

Total Cost of Ownership

TCO of MIG+MPS is much higher than TensorFusion due to obvious disadvantages of MIG+MPS:

• Complex manual planning and configuration
• Coarse-grained resource control
• Limited feature set
• Vendor lock-in

In comparison, TensorFusion is vendor-neutral and open source, supports fine-grained resource control and remote GPU sharing, with extensive automation across its feature set. It's free for small teams, and charges less than 4% of computing cost for medium and large teams to archive 50%+ cost saving.