so CUDA has gotten me excited about programming again. i usually stick to just doing cad, but i realized my CAD software doesnt support it…you know what that means…
so i want to get started, learning and compiling cuda, BUT i dont have a cuda enabled card (ATI :( ) is there anyway to simulate the process so i can try my hand at coding?
thanks
Well, GPU card does not cost that much :)
the one i want does :) gonna save my money and buy it to.
The good thing about CUDA is that is provides enough abstraction of the hardware that it doesn’t really matter what GPU you use for development. So a sub $50 dollar Geforce 210 is, from a CUDA programming point of view, identical to a $1000 Quadro FX3800 (with the exception of lack of double precision support).
Leaving all of that aside, there is a CUDA emulation mode supported, but it isn’t a particularly great way to learn about coding in CUDA because it doesn’t do proper parallel execution and it doesn’t enforce strict memory space separation. There are plenty of broken algorithms and coding mistakes which will appear to run perfectly in emulation and fail miserably on a real GPU.