Preferred CUDA Version for 10.4?

Accelerated Computing HPC Compilers Legacy PGI Compilers
1

I was wondering if there is a preferred CUDA version for PGI 10.4? That is, should I now upgrade to 3.0 or stick with 2.3? (I’d been holding off on a CUDA 3 upgrade since 10.3 wasn’t a fan of it.)

I don’t have any Fermi yet, so I’d still be on T10 cards, but I don’t know if there are upgrades/fixes for CUDA present in 3.0 that make it preferable for running even T10 architecture. (Or, I suppose, upgrades/fixes in the video driver.)

2

I’d be very interested to know the answer too, as I spent a week trying to get 10.3 to work with cuda-3.0(beta) only to be told eventually that they’re not compatible. Both cuda-3.0 and PGF 10.4 will be needed for Fermi as I think you know. Do let us know if you try…

3

Hi Matt,

While it’s up to you, since you’re just compiling for your device, I personally recommend moving to CUDA 3.0. It seems that NIVIDIA has improved performance and it sets you up for Fermi. Another user posted that she saw a nice speed-up by simply compiling with CUDA 3.0.

The caveat is that your binary can only be run on a system that has drivers that support CUDA 3.0 making it less portable.

  • Mat
4

One last question. If I move my testbed from 10.4/2.3 to 10.4/3.0, does 10.4 have to be reinstalled to see CUDA 3.0 if it was already installed with 2.3? Or will the reboot to get the 3.0 drivers online also move PGI from 2.3 to 3.0.

Thanks,
TheMatt(.0)

5

Hi Matt,

One last question. If I move my testbed from 10.4/2.3 to 10.4/3.0, does 10.4 have to be reinstalled to see CUDA 3.0 if it was already installed with 2.3? Or will the reboot to get the 3.0 drivers online also move PGI from 2.3 to 3.0.

While we ship the CUDA 3.0 Toolkit (at least the portions we need), you’ll need to download a CUDA 3.0 compatible driver for your device from NVIDIA.

In 10.4, we moved the location of the NVIDIA CUDA components from “$PGI///cuda” to the “$PGI//2010/cuda” directory. It seemed redundant to reinstall the same toolkit for each release so we decided to move them to the common directory. Though, if you opted to install CUDA with 10.4, you got both CUDA 2.3 and CUDA 3.0. No need to reinstall.

  • Mat
6

So does that mean pgaccelinfo, et al, work off of the driver version? If it sees 190.53, you get 2.3, but if it sees 195.36.15, you get 3.0?