Linux and CUDA with Nvidia Optimus

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Setup and Installation
1

Hello everyone,

I’ve got an Acer Aspire V3-571G. This laptop has Nvidia Optimus and this features:

  • Intel i7-3632QM with Intel HD Graphics 4000
  • Nvidia GeForce 710M (2GB VRAM)
    I usually use Fedora 20 as main system but cannot install Nvidia CUDA development kit, so i decided to install an additional Ubuntu 14.04 and it works well with some problems:
  • System freezes randomly (i am able to rescue changing from graphical tty to text tty and returning but it’s annoying)
  • I need to dedicate nvidia card only for deploying apps, but i don’t know how to disable nvidia card graphic mode. I didn’t explain well so i’ll do in other way: I need to use all graphics cores and memory for my programs and if i use some of them for showing, i’ll lose performance. How can i do disable nvidia graphic card for showing? Remember: this laptop has Nvidia Optimus (Hybrid Graphics) and i don’t use bumblebee.

Thank you and sorry my bad english.

2

I believe this is what you want:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/131506/how-can-i-get-nvidia-cuda-or-opencl-working-on-a-laptop-with-nvidia-discrete-car

Basically you want to keep using the intel driver for display, but call CUDA with the NVIDIA driver without using it for rendering (basically not creating an xorg.conf file that uses the nvidia driver)

You might have to modprobe the nvidia driver after starting X before CUDA apps will work. I have not tried this in a good amount of time, but presumably it should still work. Also, all bets are off if you are trying to display anything OpenGL to the screen, because you will need bumblebee or use your existing method for that.