Running a CUDA application

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
1

I was wondering what is required just to run a CUDA application? Does the CUDA nvidia driver & toolkit still have to be installed?

I’m trying to implement CUDA in an application I am writing but don’t want people to have to install all the extra CUDA drivers/toolkit, so is it possible just to supply some dlls with the program to get it to work? If so what are the dlls required?

Thanks in advance!

2

AFAIK a suitable card (obviously) and standard drivers for it. Toolkit is needed if you need to compile things.

You will need to provide all the used libraries along the executable.

3

OK thats great, so standard drivers are ok? Why does the CUDA Website say that a “cuda” driver is required - or is supplying the libraries/dlls with the executable basically doing the same thing?

4

I’m not sure, but since Forceware 169.09 CUDA drivers are included with display drivers. Maybe before this version they were separate.

You may notice that the link next to

CUDA 1.1

CUDA driver: NVIDIA Driver for Microsoft Windows XP with CUDA Support (169.21)

points to the standard driver download location for the Forceware driver

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.21_whql.html

edit: of course you don’t have to use the old 169.21 version. I downloaded 175.16 from http://www.nvidia.com/page/drivers.html and use them with CUDA 1.1

5

It has been a while since I’ve tested CUDA, and haven’t used version 2.0 yet, but IIRC, the driver and the toolkit are necessary as the toolkit has all the RTLs needed for the CUDA calls, but the SDK is necessary to compile code. I do remember testing VMD and having to have the toolkit installed, otherwise the software would complain of missing libraries.

6

I think Nvidia allows to supply the libraries independently from the toolkit (you may want to confirm that if you’re working on something commercially) so if it’s only the problem of libraries, the developer could just ship them with the executable, no?

7

Not sure. I’d have to look through the license agreement on that. I’m more of a hardware guy, not a software guy. I’m just saying from experience from testing other people apps on our system.

8

Thanks alot for the info guys, will give it a try out!