Antigonish (Dan McRae)

My home lab for AI models - llmlaba v1

After I began learning MLOps I realized that I needed some kind of home lab, there are a lot of GPUs that I need to learn how to set up and test.
So I spent some time to do a researching which platform I could buy or build.
My requirements ware:
- Limited budget
- Power supply 1 kW or higher
- Few PCIe slots to be able to install more than one gpu
- Zero maintenance cost, I don't want spend a lot of time or money to maintain lab hardware, except for the GPUs

I chose the Intel Mac Pro 7.1:
- Prices on eBay acceptable
- Excelent cooling
- 1.4 kW power supply
- 7 PCIe slots
- Zero maintenance: I don't need to do anything with the Mac Pro hardware; it just works
- Classic UEFI boot loader

It requires a bit of OS preparation:
1. Install Ubuntu 24.04 (it works with the general PC ISO image)
2. Set up T2 drivers

sudo apt install -y dkms linux-headers-$(uname -r) applesmc-t2 apple-bce lm-sensors

3. Install t2fanrd to manually manage fans (/etc/t2fand.conf) https://wiki.t2linux.org/guides/fan/
4. Fix PCIe BAR: add pci=realloc to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT so the Linux kernel will properly initializes server GPUs without Graphics Output Protocol
5. Install NVIDIA GPU driver:

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-570

And it works!
I was able to run server-grade Nvidia Tesla P100 (required DIY air duct), and consumer Nvidia Titan X, Titan V, GTX 1080 cards on the old Mac Pro 7.1 - even three in parallel.