
Last official update on February 28, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Preface: Hopper PPCIe is limited to HGX 8-way systems, where the eight GPUs and four NVSwitches are passed through to one VM. Other topologies are not supported.
Background: The GPU vBIOS can communicate through IOCTL (Input/Output Control) calls. IOCTL is a system call for device-specific input/output operations and other operations which cannot be expressed by regular system calls. In the context of GPU drivers, IOCTLs are used to interact with the GPU hardware, including tasks like memory management, command submission, and mode setting.
CUDA Interprocess Communication (IPC) is not supported in PPCIe mode. Developer tools such as NVIDIA Nsight for profiling are not supported in PPCIe mode.
When an IOCTL contains privileged functionality and is exposed unnecessarily, attackers may be able to access this functionality by invoking the IOCTL.
Vulnerability details: NVIDIA Hopper HGX for 8-GPU contains a vulnerability in the GPU vBIOS that may allow a malicious actor with tenant level GPU access to write to an unsupported registry causing a bad state. A successful exploit of this vulnerability may lead to denial of service.
Official announcement: Please refer to the link for details – https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5561