nvidia-smi (NVIDIA System Management Interface)
* What it is: The primary and most widely used tool for interacting with and monitoring NVIDIA GPUs. It's included with the NVIDIA driver installation.
* What it shows:
* High-level summary: Gives a snapshot of the GPU's state.
* GPU utilization: Shows overall GPU utilization percentage.
* Memory usage: Details on total, used, and free GPU memory.
* Process information: Lists which processes are using the GPU and how much memory they're consuming.
* GPU temperature and fan speed.
* Power consumption.
* Driver and CUDA version.
* Key features:
* Static snapshot: By default, it gives a single, non-updating output. You can run it in a loop (e.g., watch -n 1 nvidia-smi) for continuous monitoring.