NVIDIA GPU-based FAN controller for SUPERMICRO server

This controller enables automatic adjustments of FANs in SUPERMICRO servers based on GPU temperature. Only NVIDIA GPUs are supported since the tool uses nvidia-smi to parse the GPU temperature. FANs are controlled through IPMI tool (impitool) using the modified superfans (https://github.com/putnam/superfans) script.

Requirements

• Linux (tested on Ubuntu 16.04.5)
• Python 2.7
• nvidia drivers/tools (nvidia-smi)
• IPMI tool (impitool) with loaded module (modprobe ipmi_devintf)

Tested on SUPERMICRO 4029GP TRT2 with RTX 2080 Ti (nvidia 415.27 drivers).

NOTE: Using this script on other systems requires manual calibration of a function that converts the FANs RPM values into %-based values (function SUPERMICRO_4029GP_TRT2_RPM_to_percent() in supermicro.py). Current values are hardcoded for SUPERMICRO 4029GP TRT2.

Usage

Directly call python script (requires sudo access for impitool):

sudo python superfans_gpu_controller.py

Or install systemd service (superfans-gpu-controller.service):

sudo chmod +x ./install_daemon.sh
sudo ./install_daemon.sh

Service is registered to start at system startup. Start and stop it using:

# start
sudo systemctl start superfans-gpu-controller

# stop
sudo systemctl stop superfans-gpu-controller

# check the status
sudo systemctl status superfans-gpu-controller

# view logs (with trailing)
sudo journalctl -f -u superfans-gpu-controller

Settings

Currently the settings are hardcoded into superfans_gpu_controller.py using the following table:

• 0°C => 20%
• 60°C => 25%
• 70°C => 30%
• 80°C => 35%
• 87°C => 40%
• 90°C => 43%

At full workload using 4x RTX 2080 Ti this results in around 75°C - 80°C at GPU.

TODO:

• split settings into seperate config file
• enable linear increases between each setting point
• enable online calibration of FANs (currenlty hardcoded for SUPERMICRO 4029GP TRT2!!)
• enable robust detection of faulty FANs as outliers (using RANSAC-like algorithm)