OptiX 7 visual profiling with timeline

Gaming and Visualization Technologies Visualization OptiX
1

Hi,

is it correct that Visual Profiler does not show OptiX 7 kernels? And will never support?

Can Nsight Systems show a visual timeline of both CUDA and OptiX 7 kernels? If yes, how to do it?

If neither Visual Profiler or Nsight Systems can show this timeline, can Nsight Graphics be used to show it? The application is a console application with only CUDA and OptiX 7 calls (no windows).

I was able to find and measure raygen* kernels from the application using Nsight Compute but it seems there is no way to visualize the kernels on a timeline?

2

Hi mikoro,

I believe that Nsight Systems has been updated to work with OptiX, but Visual Profiler has not. The other tools that have OptiX support are Nsight Compute and Nsight VSE.

We are updating OptiX to show your OptiX 7 kernels in your Nsight Systems output, but that isn’t out in a public driver yet. It’s coming soon.

In the mean time, you can use NVTX to mark your own OptiX kernels, and let you see them in Night Systems mixed with your CUDA kernels. Adding NVTX markers is quite simple, you just wrap your launch call with the markers. Here’s a code snippet I’ve used before to show my OptiX launch:

#include <nvtx3/nvToolsExt.h>
...
   nvtxRangePushA("OptiX");
   optixLaunch( ... );
   nvtxRangePop();

In Nsight Systems, make sure you enable collection of NVTX data when you profile.

–
David.

3