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NVTOP

What is NVTOP?

NVTOP stands for Neat Videocard TOP, a (h)top like task monitor for GPUs and accelerators. It can handle multiple GPUs and print information about them in a htop-familiar way.

Currently supported vendors are AMD (Linux amdgpu driver), Apple (limited M1 & M2 support), Huawei (Ascend), Intel (Linux i915 or Xe driver), NVIDIA (Linux proprietary divers), Qualcomm Adreno (Linux MSM driver).

Because a picture is worth a thousand words:

NVTOP interface

Table of Contents

NVTOP Options and Interactive Commands

Interactive Setup Window

NVTOP has a builtin setup utility that provides a way to specialize the interface to your needs. Simply press F2 and select the options that are the best for you.

NVTOP Setup Window

Saving Preferences

You can save the preferences set in the setup window by pressing F12. The preferences will be loaded the next time you run nvtop.

NVTOP Manual and Command line Options

NVTOP comes with a manpage!

man nvtop

For quick command line arguments help

nvtop -h
nvtop --help

GPU Support

AMD

NVTOP supports AMD GPUs using the amdgpu driver through the exposed DRM and sysfs interface.

AMD introduced the fdinfo interface in kernel 5.14 (browse kernel source). Hence, you will need a kernel with a version greater or equal to 5.14 to see the processes using AMD GPUs.

Support for recent GPUs are regularly mainlined into the linux kernel, so please use a recent-enough kernel for your GPU.

Intel

NVTOP supports Intel GPUs using the i915 or xe linux driver.

Intel introduced the fdinfo interface in kernel 5.19 (browse kernel source). Hence, you will need a kernel with a version greater or equal to 5.19 to see the processes using Intel GPUs.

INTEL SUPPORT STATUS

  • Intel is working on exposing more hardware information through an HWMON interface. The patches are still a work in progress: see patch series.
  • The fdinfo interface does not expose the memory allocated by the process. The field in the process list is therefore empty.

NVIDIA

The NVML library does not support some of the queries for GPUs coming before the Kepler microarchitecture. Anything starting at GeForce 600, GeForce 800M and successor should work fine. For more information about supported GPUs please take a look at the NVML documentation.

Adreno

NVTOP supports Adreno GPUs using the msm linux driver.

msm introduced the fdinfo interface in kernel 6.0 (browse kernel source). Hence, you will need a kernel with a version greater or equal to 6.0 to see the processes using Adreno GPUs.

Apple

NVTOP includes some initial support for Apple using Metal. This is only supported when building for Apple, and when building for Apple only this vendor is supported.

APPLE SUPPORT STATUS

  • Apple support is still being worked on. Some bugs and limitations may apply.

Ascend

NVTOP supports Ascend (testing on Altas 800 (910B)) by DCMI API (version 6.0.0).

Currently, the DCMI only supports limited APIs, missing PCIe generation, tx/rx throughput info, max power draw etc.

Build

Several libraries are required in order for NVTOP to display GPU info:

  • The ncurses library driving the user interface.
    • This makes the screen look beautiful.
  • For NVIDIA: the NVIDIA Management Library (NVML) which comes with the GPU driver.
    • This queries the GPU for info.
  • For AMD: the libdrm library used to query AMD GPUs through the kernel driver.

Distribution Specific Installation Process

Ubuntu / Debian

If your distribution provides the snap utility, follow the snap installation process to obtain an up-to-date version of nvtop.

A standalone application is available as AppImage.

Ubuntu Impish (21.10), Debian buster (stable) and more recent

  • sudo apt install nvtop

Ubuntu PPA

A PPA supporting Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04 and newer is provided by Martin Wimpress that offers an up-to-date version of nvtop, enabled for NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flexiondotorg/nvtop
sudo apt install nvtop

Older

  • AMD and Intel Dependencies

    sudo apt install libdrm-dev libsystemd-dev
# Ubuntu 18.04
sudo apt install libudev-dev

  • NVIDIA Depenency

  • NVTOP Dependencies

  • CMake, ncurses and Git

sudo apt install cmake libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev git

Fedora / Red Hat / CentOS

A standalone application is available as AppImage.

Fedora 36 and newer

  • sudo dnf install nvtop

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and 9

  • sudo dnf install -y https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-$(rpm -E %{rhel}).noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install nvtop

CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux

  • sudo dnf install -y epel-release
sudo dnf install nvtop

Build process for Fedora / Red Hat / CentOS:

  • AMD and Intel Dependencies

    sudo dnf install libdrm-devel systemd-devel

  • NVIDIA Depenency

    • NVIDIA drivers, CUDA required for nvml libraries (see RPM Fusion)

  • NVTOP Dependencies

  • CMake, ncurses, C++ and Git

sudo dnf install cmake ncurses-devel git gcc-c++

OpenSUSE

A standalone application is available as an AppImage.

Build process for OpenSUSE:

  • AMD Dependecy

    sudo zypper install libdrm-devel

  • NVIDIA Depenency

  • NVTOP Dependencies

    • CMake, ncurses and Git 
      sudo zypper install cmake ncurses-devel git

  • NVTOP

Arch Linux

  • sudo pacman -S nvtop

Gentoo

  • sudo layman -a guru && sudo emerge -av nvtop

AppImage

An AppImage is a standalone application. Just download the AppImage, make it executable and run it!

  • Go to the release page and download nvtop-x86_64.AppImage

  • # Go to the download location ** The path may differ on your system **
cd $HOME/Downloads
# Make the AppImage executable
chmod u+x nvtop-x86_64.AppImage
# Enjoy nvtop
./nvtop-x86_64.AppImage

If you are curious how that works, please visit the AppImage website.

Snap

  • snap install nvtop
# Add the capability to kill processes inside nvtop
snap connect nvtop:process-control
# Add the capability to inspect GPU information (fan, PCIe, power, etc)
snap connect nvtop:hardware-observe
# AMDGPU process list support (read /proc/<pid>)
snap connect nvtop:system-observe
# Temporary workaround to get per-process GPU usage (read /proc/<pid>/fdinfo)
snap connect nvtop:kubernetes-support

Notice: The connect commands allow

Conda-forge

A conda-forge feedstock for nvtop is available.

conda / mamba / miniforge

conda install --channel conda-forge nvtop

pixi

pixi global install nvtop

Docker

  • NVIDIA drivers (same as above)

  • nvidia-docker (See Container Toolkit Installation Guide)

  • git clone https://github.com/Syllo/nvtop.git && cd nvtop
sudo docker build --tag nvtop .
sudo docker run -it --rm --runtime=nvidia --gpus=all --pid=host nvtop

NVTOP Build

git clone https://github.com/Syllo/nvtop.git
mkdir -p nvtop/build && cd nvtop/build
cmake .. -DNVIDIA_SUPPORT=ON -DAMDGPU_SUPPORT=ON -DINTEL_SUPPORT=ON
make

# Install globally on the system
sudo make install

# Alternatively, install without privileges at a location of your choosing
# make DESTDIR="/your/install/path" install

If you use conda as environment manager and encounter an error while building NVTOP, try conda deactivate before invoking cmake.

The build system supports multiple build types (e.g. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo):

  • Release: Binary without debug info
  • RelWithDebInfo: Binary with debug info
  • Debug: Compile with warning flags and address/undefined sanitizers enabled (for development purposes)

Troubleshoot

  • The plot looks bad:
    • Verify that you installed the wide character version of the ncurses library (libncursesw5-dev for Debian / Ubuntu), clean the build directory and restart the build process.
  • Putty: Tell putty not to lie about its capabilities ($TERM) by setting the field Terminal-type string to putty in the menu Connection > Data > Terminal Details.

License

NVTOP is licensed under the GPLv3 license or any later version. You will find a copy of the license inside the COPYING file of the repository or at the GNU website <www.gnu.org/licenses/>.