Network bandwidths and GPUs


Higher network bandwidths can improve the performance of your distributed workloads running on Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) instances.

Overview

The maximum network bandwidth that is available for VMs with attached GPUs on Compute Engine is as follows:

  • For A3 accelerator-optimized VMs, you can get a maximum network bandwidth of up to 1,800 Gbps.
  • For A2 and G2 accelerator-optimized VMs, you can get a maximum network bandwidth of up to 100 Gbps, based on the machine type.
  • For N1 general-purpose VMs that have P100 and P4 GPUs attached, a maximum network bandwidth of 32 Gbps is available. This is similar to the maximum rate available to N1 VMs that don't have GPUs attached. For more information about network bandwidths, see maximum egress data rate.
  • For N1 general-purpose VMs that have T4 and V100 GPUs attached, you can get a maximum network bandwidth of up to 100 Gbps, based on the combination of GPU and vCPU count.

Network bandwidth and Google Virtual NIC (gVNIC)

To get the higher network bandwidth rates (50 Gbps or higher) applied to your GPU VMs, it is recommended that you use Google Virtual NIC (gVNIC). For more information about creating GPU VMs that use gVNIC, see Creating GPU VMs that use higher bandwidths.

Accelerator-optimized VMs

This section outlines the maximum network bandwidth available for A3, A2, and G2 accelerator-optimized VMs.

A3 VMs

Each A3 machine type has a fixed number of NVIDIA H100 80GB GPUs attached, a fixed vCPU count, and a fixed VM memory size.

  • Single NIC A3 VMs: For A3 VMs with 1 to 4 GPUs attached, only a single physical network interface card (NIC) is available.
  • Multi-NIC A3 VMs: For A3 VMs with 8 GPUS attached, multiple physical NICs are available. For these A3 machine types the NICs are arranged as follows on a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) bus:
    • For the A3 Mega machine type: a NIC arrangement of 8+1 is available. With this arrangement, 8 NICs share the same PCIe bus, and 1 NIC resides on a separate PCIe bus.
    • For the A3 High machine type: a NIC arrangement of 4+1 is available. With this arrangement, 4 NICs share the same PCIe bus, and 1 NIC resides on a separate PCIe bus.
    • For the A3 Edge machine type machine type: a NIC arrangement of 4+1 is available. With this arrangement, 4 NICs share the same PCIe bus, and 1 NIC resides on a separate PCIe bus. These 5 NICs provide a total network bandwidth of 400 Gbps for each VM.

    NICs that share the same PCIe bus, have a non-uniform memory access (NUMA) alignment of one NIC per two NVIDIA H100 80GB GPUs. These NICs are ideal for dedicated high bandwidth GPU to GPU communication. The physical NIC that resides on a separate PCIe bus is ideal for other networking needs.

A3 Mega

Machine type GPU count GPU memory*
(GB HBM3)
vCPU count VM memory (GB) Attached Local SSD (GiB) Physical NIC count Maximum network bandwidth (Gbps)
a3-megagpu-8g 8 640 208 1,872 6,000 9 1,800

A3 High

When provisioning a3-highgpu-1g, a3-highgpu-2g, or a3-highgpu-4g machine types, you must either use Spot VMs or a feature that uses the Dynamic Workload Scheduler (DWS) such as resize requests in a MIG. For detailed instructions on either of these options, review the following:
Machine type GPU count GPU memory*
(GB HBM3)
vCPU count VM memory (GB) Attached Local SSD (GiB) Physical NIC count Maximum network bandwidth (Gbps)
a3-highgpu-1g 1 80 26 234 750 1 25
a3-highgpu-2g 2 160 52 468 1,500 1 50
a3-highgpu-4g 4 320 104 936 3,000 1 100
a3-highgpu-8g 8 640 208 1,872 6,000 5 800

A3 Edge

Machine type GPU count GPU memory*
(GB HBM3)
vCPU count VM memory (GB) Attached Local SSD (GiB) Physical NIC count Maximum network bandwidth (Gbps)
a3-edgegpu-8g 8 640 208 1,872 6,000 5
  • 800: for asia-south1 and northamerica-northeast2
  • 400: for all other A3 Edge regions

*GPU memory is the memory on a GPU device that can be used for temporary storage of data. It is separate from the VM's memory and is specifically designed to handle the higher bandwidth demands of your graphics-intensive workloads.
A vCPU is implemented as a single hardware hyper-thread on one of the available CPU platforms.
Maximum egress bandwidth cannot exceed the number given. Actual egress bandwidth depends on the destination IP address and other factors. See Network bandwidth.

A2 VMs

Each A2 machine type has a fixed number of NVIDIA A100 40GB or NVIDIA A100 80 GB GPUs attached. Each machine type also has a fixed vCPU count and memory size.

A2 machine series are available in two types:

  • A2 Ultra: these machine types have A100 80GB GPUs and Local SSD disks attached.
  • A2 Standard: these machine types have A100 40GB GPUs attached.

A2 Ultra

Machine type GPU count vCPU count VM memory (GB) Maximum network bandwidth (Gbps)
a2-ultragpu-1g 1 12 170 24
a2-ultragpu-2g 2 24 340 32
a2-ultragpu-4g 4 48 680 50
a2-ultragpu-8g 8 96 1,360 100

A2 Standard

Machine type GPU count vCPU count VM memory (GB) Maximum network bandwidth (Gbps)
a2-highgpu-1g 1 12 85 24
a2-highgpu-2g 2 24 170 32
a2-highgpu-4g 4 48 340 50
a2-highgpu-8g 8 96 680 100
a2-highgpu-16g 16 96 1,360 100

G2 VM configuration

Each G2 machine type has a fixed number of NVIDIA L4 GPUs and vCPUs attached. Each G2 machine type also has a default memory and a custom memory range. The custom memory range defines the amount of memory that you can allocate to your VM for each machine type. You can specify your custom memory during VM creation.

Machine type GPU count vCPU count Default VM memory (GB) Custom VM memory range (GB) Maximum network bandwidth(Gbps)
g2-standard-4 1 4 16 16 to 32 10
g2-standard-8 1 8 32 32 to 54 16
g2-standard-12 1 12 48 48 to 54 16
g2-standard-16 1 16 64 54 to 64 32
g2-standard-24 2 24 96 96 to 108 32
g2-standard-32 1 32 128 96 to 128 32
g2-standard-48 4 48 192 192 to 216 50
g2-standard-96 8 96 384 384 to 432 100

N1 GPU VMs

For N1 general-purpose VMs that have T4 and V100 GPUs attached, you can get a maximum network bandwidth of up to 100 Gbps, based on the combination of GPU and vCPU count. For all other N1 GPU VMs, see Overview.

Review the following section to calculate the maximum network bandwidth that is available for your T4 and V100 VMs based on the GPU model, vCPU, and GPU count.

Less than 5 vCPUs

For T4 and V100 VMs that have 5 vCPUs or less, a maximum network bandwidth of 10 Gbps is available.

More than 5 vCPUs

For T4 and V100 VMs that have more than 5 vCPUs, maximum network bandwidth is calculated based on the number of vCPUs and GPUs for that VM.

GPU model Number of GPUs Maximum network bandwidth calculation
NVIDIA V100 1 min(vcpu_count * 2, 32)
2 min(vcpu_count * 2, 32)
4 min(vcpu_count * 2, 50)
8 min(vcpu_count * 2, 100)
NVIDIA T4 1 min(vcpu_count * 2, 32)
2 min(vcpu_count * 2, 50)
4 min(vcpu_count * 2, 100)

Create high bandwidth VMs

To create VMs that use higher network bandwidths, see Use higher network bandwidth.

To test or verify the bandwidth speed for any configuration, you can use the benchmarking test. For more information, see Checking network bandwidth.

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