NVIDIA has acknowledged that 2.0beta2 driver contains a bug: even for the secondary GPU watchdog is still active.
This problem is still not solved in the CUDA 2.0! Kernel terminates with “the launch timed out and was terminated” message (the only difference is that it works for a bit longer time now: 11-12 seconds instead of about 7 seconds).
This is really strange and annoying and it is crucial for many tasks (including mine), my kernel may need much more than 12 seconds.
What will NVIDIA guys say this time ?
Here is the thread with confirmation of the bug: Confirmation
If your kernel needs a significant amount of time to finish, and there’s no easy way to get shorter kernel runtimes, then I would suggest you use Linux to run your application. If you use Linux and disable the X-server (or whatever it’s called), then your kernels can run as long as you want them to run. If you have a computer with Windows XP or Vista, you can still dual boot with Linux. Back when CUDA drivers weren’t available for Vista, I installed Ubuntu Linux and used it for CUDA, which worked fine.
I know about Linux. However, it is not easy to port the software natively created for Windows to Linux, also, I don’t understand why this obvious crucial issue can’t be fixed by nvidia.
I am the starter of the other thread that is mentioned. I too thought that the watchdog timer could be fixed for 2.0. I actually went to the NVISION conference and got to talk to a couple of people about it. I did not use the 2.0 before the conference, so most of them told me that it should have been fixed. However, when I got back it was not <img src=‘http://hqnveipbwb20/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/crying.gif’ class=‘bbc_emoticon’ alt=‘:’(’ /> . I was told by another programmer that there mighyt be a flag that will allow you to disable the watchdog. I know that may be unsafe, but I would like to know what that is to continue work on the newer 280 and 2.0 driver. (2.0 driver needed for the 280)
Prelution
Once again please shine some light on this so we know what is happening
I even heard one telling that the watchdog was completely disabled in 2.0. That I found hard to believe and am happy that that is at least not true. But yes, it is an irritating bug I can imagine