N150 N300 T3K P100 P150 P300C Galaxy 5 min Validated

Hardware Detection

Detect and verify your Tenstorrent hardware using the tt-smi command-line tool.

Before You Begin: Is Your System Already Set Up?

If you're using:

You can skip directly to running tt-smi below!

Need to Install? Use tt-installer 2.0

If tt-smi is not found on your system, the fastest way to set up is with tt-installer 2.0 (recommended for 95% of users):

# One-command installation (5-15 minutes)
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://github.com/tenstorrent/tt-installer/releases/latest/download/install.sh)"

What it installs:

Consult the tt-installer repo for more information.

What This Does

The tt-smi command scans your system for connected Tenstorrent devices and displays their status, including:

Run the Command

This command will scan for connected Tenstorrent devices:

tt-smi

🔍 Detect Tenstorrent Hardware
VS Code
tt-smi

Understanding Your Hardware

After running tt-smi, you'll see information about your Tenstorrent hardware. To get structured output, use:

tt-smi -s

Example output (JSON format):

{
  "board_info": {
    "board_type": "n150",
    "coords": "0,0"
  },
  "telemetry": {
    "voltage": 0.8,
    "current": 25.3,
    "power": 20.24,
    "temperature": 45.0
  }
}

Hardware Types

Look for the board_type field to identify your hardware:

Wormhole Family (2nd Generation):

Blackhole Family (Latest Generation):

Blackhole Architecture Equivalence: All Blackhole cards (P100, P150, P300/P300c) share the same instruction set and capabilities. Lessons supporting P100 will work on P300/P300c without modification.

QuietBox Multi-Device Detection: If you have a QuietBox Tower (4x P300c), tt-smi will show 4 devices:

Device 0: 0000:01:00.0 | P300c | FW 19.4.0.0
Device 1: 0000:02:00.0 | P300c | FW 19.4.0.0
Device 2: 0000:03:00.0 | P300c | FW 19.4.0.0
Device 3: 0000:04:00.0 | P300c | FW 19.4.0.0

Each device is a separate single-chip Blackhole card. For single-chip lessons, use device 0. For multi-chip lessons, all 4 devices are available for workload distribution.

Quick Hardware Check

Extract just your hardware type:

tt-smi -s | grep -o '"board_type": "[^"]*"'

Output: "board_type": "n150"

Save this for later lessons! You'll need to know your hardware type when configuring models and servers.

Expected Output

When you run tt-smi, you should see:

For Wormhole hardware (N150, N300, T3K):

Device 0: Wormhole
Board Type: n150
PCIe: Bus 0x01, Device 0x00
Firmware Version: 1.2.3
Temperature: 45°C
Power: 20W

For Blackhole hardware (P100, P150):

Device 0: Blackhole
Board Type: p100
PCIe: Bus 0x01, Device 0x00
Firmware Version: 2.0.1
Temperature: 42°C
Power: 18W

Multiple devices:

Device 0: Wormhole (n150)
Device 1: Wormhole (n150)
Device 2: Wormhole (n150)
Device 3: Wormhole (n150)

Troubleshooting: No Hardware Detected

Don't worry if tt-smi doesn't detect your hardware immediately. You can usually fix this easily. Try these steps:

Check 1: Hardware Connection

Verify card is detected by PCIe:

lspci | grep -i tenstorrent

Expected output:

01:00.0 Processing accelerators: Tenstorrent Inc. Device [model]

If nothing appears:

Check 2: Driver Installation

Check if tt-smi is installed:

which tt-smi

Expected: /usr/local/bin/tt-smi or similar path

If not found:

Check 3: Permissions

Try with sudo:

sudo tt-smi

If this works but tt-smi alone doesn't:

Fix permissions (Linux):

sudo usermod -a -G tenstorrent $USER
# Log out and back in for group changes to take effect

Check 4: Device Reset

If device appears but shows errors:

tt-smi -r

What this does:

If reset fails:

# Full state cleanup (requires sudo)
sudo pkill -9 -f tt-metal
sudo pkill -9 -f vllm
sudo rm -rf /dev/shm/tenstorrent* /dev/shm/tt_*
tt-smi -r

Still Having Issues?

Check system logs:

dmesg | grep -i tenstorrent

Get help:

Common issues:

QuietBox Multi-Device Systems

What is QuietBox? QuietBox is a Tenstorrent multi-chip development system. The QuietBox Blackhole Tower contains 4x P300c cards (4 separate single-chip Blackhole devices).

Key Concepts:

4x P300c ≠ 4-chip System

Device Enumeration:

tt-smi -s  # Shows all 4 devices
{
  "device_0": {"board_type": "p300c", "pci_bus": "0000:01:00.0"},
  "device_1": {"board_type": "p300c", "pci_bus": "0000:02:00.0"},
  "device_2": {"board_type": "p300c", "pci_bus": "0000:03:00.0"},
  "device_3": {"board_type": "p300c", "pci_bus": "0000:04:00.0"}
}

Configuration for Lessons:

Single-Chip Lessons (Most lessons):

Multi-Device Lessons (Advanced):

Troubleshooting:

What You Learned

Next step: Now that you know your hardware, verify your tt-metal installation works correctly.

Continue to Lesson 2: Verify Installation!

Learn More