nbd-vram: A Linux tool to use NVIDIA GPU VRAM as swap space for laptops with soldered memory
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tanelpoder
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Summary
A GitHub project called nbd-vram enables using NVIDIA GPU VRAM as swap space on Linux, particularly useful for laptops with soldered RAM and no upgrade path. The tool allows overflow from RAM to VRAM (fast PCIe), then to zram compression, and finally to SSD swap. Tested on an RTX 3070 laptop GPU with 8GB VRAM, it tripled addressable memory to ~46GB by allocating 7GB of VRAM for swap alongside existing zram and SSD swap.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledUse your NVIDIA GPU's VRAM as swap space on Linux.
Built for laptops with soldered memory and no upgrade path.
If you have an RTX card sitting there with 8GB of VRAM and you're getting swapped to SSD, this puts that VRAM to work.
Overflow order is: RAM fills, then VRAM absorbs spill (fast, PCIe), then zram compresses the rest (CPU), then SSD only if everything else is exhausted.
End result including zram and SSD swap ~46 GB, tripled the addressable memory.
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