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Hardware-Accelerated Machine Learning [Experimental]

This feature allows you to use a GPU to accelerate machine learning tasks, such as Smart Search and Facial Recognition, while reducing CPU load. As this is a new feature, it is still experimental and may not work on all systems.

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You do not need to redo any machine learning jobs after enabling hardware acceleration. The acceleration device will be used for any jobs that run after enabling it.

Supported Backends​

  • ARM NN (Mali)
  • CUDA (NVIDIA GPUs with compute capability 5.2 or higher)
  • OpenVINO (Intel discrete GPUs such as Iris Xe and Arc)

Limitations​

  • The instructions and configurations here are specific to Docker Compose. Other container engines may require different configuration.
  • Only Linux and Windows (through WSL2) servers are supported.
  • ARM NN is only supported on devices with Mali GPUs. Other Arm devices are not supported.
  • Some models may not be compatible with certain backends. CUDA is the most reliable.

Prerequisites​

ARM NN​

  • Make sure you have the appropriate linux kernel driver installed
    • This is usually pre-installed on the device vendor's Linux images
  • /dev/mali0 must be available in the host server
    • You may confirm this by running ls /dev to check that it exists
  • You must have the closed-source libmali.so firmware (possibly with an additional firmware file)
    • Where and how you can get this file depends on device and vendor, but typically, the device vendor also supplies these
    • The hwaccel.ml.yml file assumes the path to it is /usr/lib/libmali.so, so update accordingly if it is elsewhere
    • The hwaccel.ml.yml file assumes an additional file /lib/firmware/mali_csffw.bin, so update accordingly if your device's driver does not require this file

CUDA​

  • The GPU must have compute capability 5.2 or greater.
  • The server must have the official NVIDIA driver installed.
  • The installed driver must be >= 535 (it must support CUDA 12.2).
  • On Linux (except for WSL2), you also need to have NVIDIA Container Toolkit installed.

OpenVINO​

  • The server must have a discrete GPU, i.e. Iris Xe or Arc. Expect issues when attempting to use integrated graphics.
  • Ensure the server's kernel version is new enough to use the device for hardware accceleration.

Setup​

  1. If you do not already have it, download the latest hwaccel.ml.yml file and ensure it's in the same folder as the docker-compose.yml.
  2. In the docker-compose.yml under immich-machine-learning, uncomment the extends section and change cpu to the appropriate backend.
  3. Still in immich-machine-learning, add one of -[armnn, cuda, openvino] to the image section's tag at the end of the line.
  4. Redeploy the immich-machine-learning container with these updated settings.

Single Compose File​

Some platforms, including Unraid and Portainer, do not support multiple Compose files as of writing. As an alternative, you can "inline" the relevant contents of the hwaccel.ml.yml file into the immich-machine-learning service directly.

For example, the cuda section in this file is:

deploy:
  resources:
    reservations:
      devices:
        - driver: nvidia
          count: 1
          capabilities:
            - gpu

You can add this to the immich-machine-learning service instead of extending from hwaccel.ml.yml:

immich-machine-learning:
  container_name: immich_machine_learning
  # Note the `-cuda` at the end
  image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-machine-learning:${IMMICH_VERSION:-release}-cuda
  # Note the lack of an `extends` section
  deploy:
    resources:
      reservations:
        devices:
          - driver: nvidia
            count: 1
            capabilities:
              - gpu
  volumes:
    - model-cache:/cache
  env_file:
    - .env
  restart: always

Once this is done, you can redeploy the immich-machine-learning container.

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You can confirm the device is being recognized and used by checking its utilization (via nvtop for CUDA, intel_gpu_top for OpenVINO, etc.). You can also enable debug logging by setting IMMICH_LOG_LEVEL=debug in the .env file and restarting the immich-machine-learning container. When a Smart Search or Face Detection job begins, you should see a log for Available ORT providers containing the relevant provider. In the case of ARM NN, the absence of a Could not load ANN shared libraries log entry means it loaded successfully.

Tips​

  • If you encounter an error when a model is running, try a different model to see if the issue is model-specific.
  • You may want to increase concurrency past the default for higher utilization. However, keep in mind that this will also increase VRAM consumption.
  • Larger models benefit more from hardware acceleration, if you have the VRAM for them.