Installing NVIDIA drivers on Windows instances
An instance with an attached GPU, such as a P3 or G4 instance, must have the appropriate NVIDIA driver installed. Depending on the instance type, you can either download a public NVIDIA driver, download a driver from Amazon S3 that is available only to AWS customers, or use an AMI with the driver pre-installed.
Types of NVIDIA drivers
The following are the main types of NVIDIA drivers that can be used with GPU-based instances.
- Tesla drivers
These drivers are intended primarily for compute workloads, which use GPUs for computational tasks such as parallelized floating-point calculations for machine learning and fast Fourier transforms for high performance computing applications.
- GRID drivers
These drivers are certified to provide optimal performance for professional visualization applications that render content such as 3D models or high-resolution videos. You can configure GRID drivers to support two modes. Quadro Virtual Workstations provide access to four 4K displays per GPU. GRID vApps provide RDSH App hosting capabilities.
- Gaming drivers
These drivers contain optimizations for gaming and are updated frequently to provide performance enhancements. They support a single 4K display per GPU.
Configured mode
On Windows, the Tesla drivers are configured to run in Tesla Compute Cluster (TCC) mode. The GRID and gaming drivers are configured to run in Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) mode. In TCC mode, the card is dedicated to compute workloads. In WDDM mode, the card supports both compute and graphics workloads.
NVIDIA control panel
The NVIDIA control panel is supported with GRID and Gaming drivers. It is not supported with Tesla drivers.
Supported APIs for Tesla drivers
OpenCL
NVIDIA CUDA and related libraries (for example, cuDNN, TensorRT, nvJPEG, and cuBLAS)
NVENC for video encoding and NVDEC for video decoding
Supported APIs for GRID and gaming drivers
DirectX, Direct2D, DirectX Video Acceleration, DirectX Raytracing
OpenCL, OpenGL, and Vulkan
NVIDIA CUDA and related libraries (for example, cuDNN, TensorRT, nvJPEG, and cuBLAS)
NVENC for video encoding and NVDEC for video decoding
Available drivers by instance type
The following table summarizes the supported NVIDIA drivers for each GPU instance type.
| Instance type | Tesla driver | GRID driver | Gaming driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| G2 | No | Yes | No |
| G3 | Yes | Yes | No |
| G4 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| P2 | Yes | No | No |
| P3 | Yes | Yes † | No |
† Using Marketplace AMIs only
Installation options
Use one of the following options to get the NVIDIA drivers required for your GPU instance.
Option 1: AMIs with the NVIDIA drivers installed
AWS and NVIDIA offer different Amazon Machine Images (AMI) that come with the NVIDIA drivers installed.
Option 2: Public NVIDIA drivers
The options offered by AWS come with the necessary license for the driver. Alternatively, you can install the public drivers and bring your own license. To install a public driver, download it from the NVIDIA site as described here.
Alternatively, you can use the options offered by AWS instead of the public drivers. To use a GRID driver on a P3 instance, use the AWS Marketplace AMIs as described in Option 1. To use a GRID driver on a G3 or G4 instance, use the AWS Marketplace AMIs, as described in Option 1 or install the NVIDIA drivers provided by AWS as described in Option 3.
To download a public NVIDIA driver
Log on to your Windows instance and download the 64-bit NVIDIA driver appropriate for the instance type from http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx. For Product Type, Product Series, and Product, use the options in the following table.
| Instance | Product Type | Product Series | Product |
|---|---|---|---|
| G2 | GRID | GRID Series | GRID K520 |
| G3 | Tesla | M-Class | M60 |
| G4 † | Tesla | T-Series | T4 |
| P2 | Tesla | K-Series | K80 |
| P3 | Tesla | V-Series | V100 |
† G4 instances require driver version 426.00 or later.
To install the NVIDIA driver on Windows
Open the folder where you downloaded the driver and launch the installation file. Follow the instructions to install the driver and reboot your instance as required.
Disable the built-in display adapter using Device Manager. Install these Windows features: Media Foundation and Quality Windows Audio Video Experience.
Check Device Manager to verify that the GPU is working correctly.
To achieve the best performance from your GPU, complete the optimization steps in Optimizing GPU settings.
Option 3: GRID drivers (G3 and G4 instances)
These downloads are available to AWS customers only. By downloading, you agree to use the downloaded software only to develop AMIs for use with the NVIDIA Tesla T4 or NVIDIA Tesla M60 hardware. Upon installation of the software, you are bound by the terms of the NVIDIA GRID Cloud End User License Agreement.
Prerequisites
Configure default credentials for the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell on your Windows instance. For more information, see Getting Started with the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell in the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell User Guide.
IAM users must have the permissions granted by the AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess policy.
To install the NVIDIA GRID driver on your Windows instance
Connect to your Windows instance and open a PowerShell window.
Download the drivers and the NVIDIA GRID Cloud End User License Agreement from Amazon S3 to your desktop using the following PowerShell commands.
Multiple versions of the NVIDIA GRID driver are stored in this bucket. You can download all of the available versions in the bucket by removing the option.
Starting with GRID version 11.0, you can use the drivers under for both G3 and G4 instances. We will not add versions later than 11.0 to , but will keep version 11.0 and the earlier versions specific to G4 under .
Navigate to the desktop and double-click the installation file to launch it (choose the driver version that corresponds to your instance OS version). Follow the instructions to install the driver and reboot your instance as required. To verify that the GPU is working properly, check Device Manager.
(Optional) Use the following command to disable the licensing page in the control panel to prevent users from accidentally changing the product type (NVIDIA GRID Virtual Workstation is enabled by default). For more information, see the GRID Licensing User Guide.
(Optional) Depending on your use case, you might complete the following optional steps. If you do not require this functionality, do not complete these steps.
To help take advantage of the four displays of up to 4K resolution, set up the high-performance display protocol, NICE DCV.
NVIDIA Quadro Virtual Workstation mode is enabled by default. To activate GRID Virtual Applications for RDSH Application hosting capabilities, complete the GRID Virtual Application activation steps in Activate NVIDIA GRID Virtual Applications.
Option 4: NVIDIA gaming drivers (G4 instances)
These drivers are available to AWS customers only. By downloading them, you agree to use the downloaded software only to develop AMIs for use with the NVIDIA Tesla T4 hardware. Upon installation of the software, you are bound by the terms of the NVIDIA GRID Cloud End User License Agreement.
Prerequisites
Configure default credentials for the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell on your Windows instance. For more information, see Getting Started with the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell in the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell User Guide.
IAM users must have the permissions granted by the AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess policy.
To install the NVIDIA gaming driver on your Windows instance
Connect to your Windows instance and open a PowerShell window.
Download and install the gaming driver using the following PowerShell commands.
Multiple versions of the NVIDIA GRID driver are stored in this S3 bucket. You can download all of the available versions in the bucket by removing the option.
Navigate to the desktop and double-click the installation file to launch it (choose the driver version that corresponds to your instance OS version). Follow the instructions to install the driver and reboot your instance as required. To verify that the GPU is working properly, check Device Manager.
Create a registry value in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global key with the name vGamingMarketplace, the type DWord, and the value 2. You can use either the Command Prompt window or a 64-bit version of PowerShell as follows.
Use the following PowerShell command to create this registry value. By default, the AWS Tools for PowerShell in AWS Windows AMIs is a 32-bit version and this command fails. Instead, use the 64-bit version of PowerShell included with the operating system.
Use the following registry command to create this registry value. You can run it using the Command Prompt window or a 64-bit version of PowerShell.
Use the following command to download the certification file, rename the file , and move the file to the Public Documents folder on your system drive. Typically, the folder path is C:\Users\Public\Public Documents (Windows Explorer) or C:\Users\Public\Documents (Command Prompt window).
For version 445.87 or later:
For earlier versions:
Reboot your instance.
Verify the NVIDIA Gaming license using the following command.
The output should be similar to the following.
(Optional) To help take advantage of the single display of up to 4K resolution, set up the high-performance display protocol NICE DCV. If you do not require this functionality, do not complete this step.
Installing an additional version of CUDA
After you install an NVIDIA graphics driver on your instance, you can install a version of CUDA other than the version that is bundled with the graphics driver. The following procedure demonstrates how to configure multiple versions of CUDA on the instance.
To install the CUDA toolkit
Connect to your Windows instance.
Open the NVIDIA website and select the version of CUDA that you need.
For Installer Type, select exe (local) and then choose Download.
Using your browser, run the downloaded install file. Follow the instructions to install the CUDA toolkit. You might be required to reboot the instance.
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