NVRM: Xid 119, Timeout waiting for RPC message from GSP-RM firmware

Xid 119/120 - GSP (GPU System Processor) RPC timeout. The driver-firmware RPC channel deadlocked; the GPU resets and the CUDA context is lost. Known driver/GSP-firmware combo bugs are the usual cause - check vendor advisories before suspecting silicon. This entry explains how to confirm the cause, apply the fix, and separate it from adjacent xid failures.

The literal signature is "NVRM: Xid 119, Timeout waiting for RPC message from GSP-RM firmware". It is a hardware failure associated with NVIDIA data center GPUs and the Linux driver. The line identifies the failing operation or subsystem, while the surrounding evidence decides whether it is the initiating fault or a downstream symptom.

Xid 119/120 - GSP (GPU System Processor) RPC timeout. The driver-firmware RPC channel deadlocked; the GPU resets and the CUDA context is lost. Known driver/GSP-firmware combo bugs are the usual cause - check vendor advisories before suspecting silicon. The failure becomes visible at this call site because the operation first requires the missing resource, valid state, healthy peer, or correct result. Earlier log lines and a known-good control carry more causal value than the final wrapper exception.

• The workload stops or loses forward progress after emitting "NVRM: Xid 119, Timeout waiting for RPC message from GSP-RM firmware".
• A retry on the same configuration reproduces the failure because the causal state has not changed.
• The outer framework exception can hide the rank, node, allocation, or dependency that failed first.
• Increasing timeouts or reducing workload size can suppress the symptom without correcting the cause.

• NVIDIA data center GPUs and the Linux driver
• production-shaped multi-accelerator workloads
• containerized and bare-metal deployments of the same stack

Apply the following checklist to a small reproduction: each box below is a positive signal that you are looking at this exact failure rather than a sibling in the same taxonomy.

• ✓Find the first occurrence of "NVRM: Xid 119, Timeout waiting for RPC message from GSP-RM firmware" and preserve at least 100 lines before it.
• ✓Identify which rank, node, device, or process emitted the first related warning.
• ✓driver + GSP firmware version vs NVIDIA advisories for your board; recurrence per GPU serial.
• ✓Repeat the same input after the targeted change and require the signature to disappear.
• ✓Resume from latest checkpoint only after the control passes.

NVRM: Xid 119, Timeout waiting for RPC message from GSP-RM firmware

Timestamps and exact values vary across runs, but the pattern. An info-level start, an early WARN, an ERROR carrying the symptom. Is the actual fingerprint you should alert on. The Denpex platform flags this combination automatically.

reset the GPU (or reboot if reset fails); resume from checkpoint. This changes the condition in the causal diagnosis instead of hiding the outer exception. The repeated control proves ownership before recovery from latest checkpoint.

# Preserve evidence before restarting
dmesg -T | grep -iE 'NVRM|Xid|AER|NVLink|ECC'
nvidia-smi -q
dcgmi diag -r 3

# Find the exact signature in the complete log
rg -n -F -- "NVRM: Xid 119, Timeout waiting for RPC message from GSP-RM firmware" <log-file>

Adapt the snippet to your framework. The same pattern holds for PyTorch Lightning, Hugging Face Trainer, DeepSpeed, Megatron-LM, and vLLM training wrappers. Where the wrapper exposes a config flag (for examplelr_scheduler_type in Trainer), prefer the flag over the imperative API to keep the schedule declarative and reproducible.

Xid 119 is one of a small set of codes the NVIDIA driver uses to report GPU faults, and the number is most of the diagnosis: it tells you whether you are looking at your own code, the driver, or a board that needs replacing.

Select the traceback or open the failed terminal, then run Denpex locally to see the initiating rank, collateral failures, exact fix, and verification command without uploading the log.

• Xid 119/120 - GSP (GPU System Processor) RPC timeout. The driver-firmware RPC channel deadlocked; the GPU resets and the CUDA context is lost. Known driver/GSP-firmware combo bugs are the usual cause - check vendor advisories before suspecting silicon.
• The decisive evidence is the first log line that precedes "NVRM: Xid 119, Timeout waiting for RPC message from GSP-RM firmware" and differs from a healthy run.
• A nearby failure remains a competing hypothesis until a control separates configuration, capacity, transport, and hardware causes.