Differences CudaMalloc vs Malloc

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
1

What is the difference between CudaMalloc and Malloc? Why would I use one over the other?

2

cudaMalloc allocates memory on the device, whereas malloc allocates on the host.

3

device meaning the GPU and host meaning CPU?

4

Sorry if my last post we not descriptive enough -

Does the device mean that it accesses the ram on the GPU and the host means that it accesses the ram controlled by the CPU?

So, Malloc will create a storage place in CPU controlled ram and cudaMalloc will create a storage place in GPU controlled ram?

5

Hi,

Yes that is correct.

6

Thanks

7

Now malloc can also be used on the device: Dynamic Global Memory Allocation and Operations. More details on this can be found at Memory Allocation and Lifetime:

cudaMalloc() and cudaFree() have distinct semantics between the host and device environments. When invoked from the host, cudaMalloc() allocates a new region from unused device memory. When invoked from the device runtime these functions map to device-side malloc() and free() .