185.18.04--you should probably consider using it

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
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185.18.04 for Linux AMD64 (finding 32-bit drivers is left as an exercise for the reader)

Apparently, this came out many days ago. I had no idea! This is the driver I’ve been running since the day it was built because it has a number of features that are pretty great, especially for developers:

  • Supports management of compute-exclusive/no-compute modes via nvidia-smi
  • killing a CUDA app no longer results in the system probably crashing. Now, there are two cases–if you kill an app using a dedicated compute GPU, everything is wonderful and it will just work. If you kill an app using a display/compute GPU, things are a bit hairier and it won’t quite recover cleanly (which is something we’re going to fix soon). However, the solution is just to restart X from a remote machine (still better than “hold the power button down”).

Of course, if you’re running a cluster, make sure to test this driver before you decide to deploy it. I’ve been using it, it’s been great for me and I’ve had zero problems (on Ubuntu 9.04, no less). But maybe you’ll find other problems that I haven’t seen, so let me know if you find anything weird in terms of CUDA-related bits.

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A release is imminent I guess/hope? ;)

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Not as imminent as I’d like…

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Hope this isn’t too dramatic or buttery, but: Again, thanks for an open and informative heads-up. Personally, I’m not used to this level of candor from the staff at large corporations. Refreshing.