Nsight-Compute (ncu) failure on JetPack 6.2 / CUDA 12.6 on Jetson AGX Orin

Developer Tools Nsight Compute
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System Configuration

  • Jetson Model: AGX Orin

  • JetPack Version: 6.2

  • CUDA Version: 12.6

  • Linux Kernel Version: 5.15.148-tegra

  • Nsight Compute Version: 2024.3.1.0

I’m Trying to Do

Profile my standalone CUDA application with Nsight Compute on the Jetson:

sudo ncu ./MyCudaApp

Observed Behavior

No package.json
Please add a package.json to the current directory, specify the --packageFile or --packageData options, or pipe a package.json to stdin and specify --stdin.

When I try to specify an output file:

sudo ncu -o profile ./MyCudaApp

I get:

error: unknown option '--o'

Yet ncu --help clearly lists -o|--output as a valid flag.

I’ve Tried

  • Running ncu --help to confirm -o exists

  • Running ncu -o profile ./MyCudaApp both from $PATH and from the ncu installation folder

  • Searching the Nsight Compute documentation for any mention of a required package.json

  • Confirming that this tooling works as expected on x86 hosts

Full Console Log

$ sudo ncu ./MyCudaApp
No package.json
Please add a package.json to the current directory, specify the --packageFile or --packageData options, or pipe a package.json to stdin and specify --stdin.
$ sudo ncu -o profile ./MyCudaApp
error: unknown option '--o'

Background With earlier JetPack releases (6.0 with CUDA 12.2), the exact same sudo ncu ./MyCudaApp and sudo ncu -o profile ./MyCudaApp commands worked without issue. This problem only started after upgrading to JetPack 6.2.

Questions

  1. Why is Nsight Compute expecting a package.json on Jetson AGX Orin?

  2. How can I profile my binary without supplying a JSON package?

  3. Is there an extra installation or environment step I’m missing on JetPack 6.2 / CUDA 12.6?

2

It seems most likely that the ncu on PATH when being root (sudo) is not actually Nsight Compute. Note that the environment changes when running under sudo. You can try e.g. sudo which ncu or sudo su - to switch to the sudo environment and check which ncu is picked up. You can also try specifying the full path to ncu under sudo, instead of relying on PATH.