Files
lancedb/docs/web/curation/gpu-function-execution.mdx
T
Jack YeandClaude Sonnet 5 de95ed3f6d docs: overhaul curation, feature engineering, security and deployment guides (#4748)
A broad documentation pass across the areas LanceDB Enterprise and
Embedded
diverge on most:

**Data Curation** -- GPU Function execution, Slurm scheduling (and what
Slurm is, for readers new to it), blob late materialization as its own
page, joins, aggregation/profiling, sampling, near-duplicate detection,
chunking, distributed shuffle, and IVF-partition clustering.

**Feature Engineering** -- computed columns and materialized views,
restructured to lead with the Function-based path and show the SQL form
side by side with Python throughout; a single Auto Refresh page instead
of
duplicating scheduling details on every refresh page; adaptive
execution;
checkpointing; GPU and Slurm placement for refresh workers; a Training
Cache page for the PyTorch data loader's automatic cache benefit.

**Security & Governance** -- an Audit Log reference (schema, access,
grants), Secrets promoted to an ordinary catalog object with their own
SQL
DDL and a vending/rotation guide, and privilege-table fixes verified
against the authorization source.

**Deployment & Maintenance** -- Horizontal Scaling and OpenTelemetry
moved
into a real Deployment area; Automated Cleanup folded into Intelligent
Auto-Maintenance (every other maintenance decision already lived there);
RTE Compaction and Advanced Conflict Resolution documented in depth.

**Landing page** -- the Enterprise feature comparison table reorganized
(several redundant or stale rows removed, several new areas added), and
the
"why Enterprise" bullets replaced with ones tied to a concrete page
(Performance, Scale, Fault tolerance, Multicloud deployment, Simplify
operations) instead of vague promises.

Plus a full pass addressing lancedb-gatekeeper's review: a real
test-safety
bug (a quickstart test could silently overwrite and delete a
deployment's
own `frames` table), a fabricated SQL statement with no backing
implementation, an actual dedup-guarantee bug in `take_row_ids`, and
dozens
of documentation-accuracy fixes verified against source rather than
taken
on faith -- each either fixed, or left with an explicit note on why it
needs a feature or deployment owner's sign-off instead of being guessed
at.

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

https://claude.ai/code/session_018PXMCbRH6i5w47TsjeEUMT

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-11-03 16:17:24 -08:00

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---
title: "GPU Function Execution"
sidebarTitle: "GPU Function Execution"
description: "How a GPU Function's worker gets scheduled onto a GPU-capable node, and what happens when none is free."
icon: microchip
keywords: ["gpu", "gpu class", "scheduling", "function", "udf", "kubernetes", "node selector"]
availability:
embedded: unavailable
enterprise: available
---
[Registering a GPU Function](/curation/create-function#gpu) sets `gpu=True`
and an optional `gpu_class`; this page covers what happens after that, when
a job actually needs a worker. An operator configures one or more named
**GPU classes** for the deployment -- each one a Kubernetes node selector,
toleration set, and resource name (such as `nvidia.com/gpu`) pointing at a
specific pool of GPU nodes, plus a hardware description (GPU model, GPU
memory, how many GPUs one worker may request). A Function with no
`gpu_class` uses the deployment's `default` class.
## Placement {#placement}
When a job needs to run a GPU Function, the agent resolves its `gpu_class`
(or `default`) to that class's node selector, tolerations, and resource
name, and requests a worker pod shaped accordingly -- this is a separate
placement path from the ordinary CPU worker ladder used by non-GPU
Functions and other background jobs (see
the [Job Framework](/basics/jobs) for that general job
machinery). The resulting pod can only schedule onto a node matching the
class's selector and tolerations, so a class is really naming a pool of
nodes, not just a resource count.
## Waiting for capacity {#capacity}
A GPU class describes the deployment's hardware, not live availability --
listing classes never tells you whether a GPU is free right now. If no
node in the class has room, the worker pod stays pending rather than
failing the job outright or falling back to a CPU worker: the job reports
that it is waiting on that GPU class's capacity, and starts running as soon
as a matching node has room. A job stuck waiting indefinitely usually means
the class's node pool needs more capacity, not that anything is
misconfigured.
{/*
Draft for the list_gpu_classes release. Keep this section unpublished
until that API ships -- v0.41.0 (the latest release) does not have it,
and there is no SQL equivalent; discovery is a REST call
(`GET /v1/gpu/classes`), not a SQL statement.
## Inspecting GPU classes {#inspecting}
<CodeGroup>
```python Python icon="python"
for gpu in db.list_gpu_classes():
print(gpu.name, gpu.gpu_model, gpu.gpu_memory_bytes, gpu.max_gpu_count_per_worker)
```
</CodeGroup>
Returns the operator-configured classes: name, resource name, GPU model
and memory, and the largest per-worker GPU count the class permits.
Listing requires the System Usage privilege.
*/}
## What to read next {#next}
<CardGroup cols={2}>
<Card title="Create a Function" icon="code" href="/curation/create-function#gpu">
Register a GPU Function and pin it to a specific class.
</Card>
<Card title="Job Framework" icon="list-check" href="/basics/jobs">
The job types a deployment runs on its own schedule.
</Card>
<Card title="GPU Refresh Execution" icon="microchip" href="/enterprise/gpu-refresh-execution">
The same placement path, for a computed column or MV refresh instead of a direct call.
</Card>
</CardGroup>