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OpenStack Cyborg

OpenStack Cyborg is an open-source accelerator lifecycle management service that manages hardware accelerators such as GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs for cloud workloads in OpenStack environments (infrastructure orchestration).

  • Provides centralized lifecycle management for hardware accelerators including discovery, provisioning, and decommissioning (infrastructure orchestration).
  • Integrates with the OpenStack ecosystem, particularly Nova, to attach accelerators to virtual machines and workloads (compute resource management).
  • Supports a plugin driver framework for different accelerator types and vendor-specific implementations (device management and extensibility).
  • Exposes Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs for managing accelerator resources, traits, and deployment workflows (infrastructure APIs).
  • Enables scheduling and placement of accelerator resources through coordination with OpenStack placement services (resource scheduling).

More About Cyborg

OpenStack Cyborg is an accelerator lifecycle management service designed to manage and orchestrate hardware accelerators such as GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs in OpenStack-based clouds (infrastructure orchestration). It addresses the problem of discovering, tracking, configuring, and allocating accelerator devices across a multi-tenant cloud so that compute workloads can consume these specialized resources through a consistent Application Programming Interface (API) and integration layer.

Cyborg focuses on several core functions that relate to accelerator-aware infrastructure management. It discovers accelerator devices on compute and accelerator nodes and maintains an inventory of these resources (device inventory management). It manages the lifecycle of accelerators, including provisioning, programming for certain device types such as FPGAs, and decommissioning (device lifecycle management). Cyborg represents accelerator capabilities as resource classes and traits, and exposes them through its APIs and the OpenStack placement service so that schedulers can match workloads with appropriate hardware (resource modeling and scheduling).

The service is architected as a set of components typical of OpenStack projects. It includes an API service that exposes REST endpoints for accelerator resources, an agent that runs on nodes to interact with the hardware, and a conductor that coordinates database operations and workflow logic (service-oriented architecture). Cyborg uses a driver framework to support different accelerator types and vendor implementations, allowing operators to deploy drivers for GPUs, FPGAs, and other devices as they are made available (plugin-based device management). This framework enables heterogeneous hardware fleets to be managed under a single control plane.

In enterprise and institutional environments, Cyborg is used with Nova and other OpenStack services to attach accelerators to virtual machines and, in some cases, to bare metal or container-based workloads via integration paths defined in project documentation (cloud infrastructure integration). Administrators can define policies on how accelerators are exposed and allocated, while users can request instances with specific accelerator resource classes or traits, enabling workload placement for Artificial Intelligence (AI), High performance computing (HPC), data analytics, or media processing use cases that depend on specialized compute hardware.

From a technology stack perspective, Cyborg relies on standard OpenStack components such as Keystone for authentication, a database backend for state, and the OpenStack placement service for resource tracking (cloud platform integration). Its REST APIs and driver model allow it to interoperate with vendor SDKs and low-level device interfaces while presenting a consistent management layer to cloud operators and tenants. In a directory or taxonomy context, OpenStack Cyborg fits under cloud infrastructure management, with a focus on accelerator and specialized hardware orchestration within OpenStack-based private or public clouds.