Real Apple GPU clusters (alpha)
Kiac can now create multi-node Kubernetes clusters with dedicated workers backed by the real Apple GPU through krunkit, virtio-gpu, Mesa Venus, and Vulkan. Ordinary clusters remain on the fast apple/container backend and pay no GPU-mode startup or idle overhead.
Highlights
- Create GPU clusters with either K3s or kubeadm using
--gpu-workers N. - Schedule the honest
kiac.dev/gpuresource through the default device plugin or Kubernetes DRA on Kubernetes 1.36+. - Use DRA ResourceClaims for consumable GPU-memory accounting and CDI-based
/dev/driinjection. - Inspect and prove the path with
kiac gpu doctor,status,bench,values, and namespace-scopedcompatcommands. - Keep the normal Kiac experience: Cilium or kindnet, LoadBalancer Services, Gateway API, storage, metrics, observability, image loading, stop/start, resume, verify, support bundles, and multi-node traffic.
- Follow the complete GPU and inference lab, including Vulkan proof, DRA claims, TinyLlama inference, and native Metal-versus-Venus benchmarking.
Important boundaries
- GPU mode is alpha and currently supports Apple silicon Macs with IPv4 clusters.
- Linux pods receive the real Apple GPU through Venus/Vulkan. They do not receive CUDA, NVML,
nvidia-smi, Metal, or MLX. - Kiac does not advertise
nvidia.com/gpucapacity. The optional compatibility webhook only rewrites legacy resource requests inside explicitly enabled namespaces. - GPU clusters require krunkit 1.3.2+ and vmnet-helper 0.13.0+;
kiac gpu doctorchecks the complete host toolchain.
Upgrade
brew update
brew upgrade kiac
kiac gpu doctorFull changelog: v0.6.0...v0.7.1