Which free IDE works with Cuda Toolkit?

Hi everyone,

I am a high school student/gamer want to learn parallel computing with Cuda. I don’t have Visual Studio, what other option(s) do I have?

Thanks in advance.

–Jeffrey

You don’t need an IDE to build CUDA, you can use makefiles and commandline tools. However, if you are on Windows, you will need a version of MSVS for use with CUDA, as that is the only supported host toolchain. I think there is a free “Community Edition” of MSVS, but I don’t know anything about it.

Thanks, I am not sure if VS Community Edition or VS Code IDE would work with Cuda, when I installed Cuda toolkit, it said VS 2010, 2013, 2015 or something like that missing.

Assume VS Code and Community Edition work, how to compile and run Cuda program in those environments? I am just trying to compile and run a simple console/text based Cuda program to get started.

I don’t use IDEs and my (not very popular) recommendation is not to use them. To build a simple console application from a single source file test.cu, simply invoke:

nvcc -o test.exe test.cu

Done. As I said, to get this far you need to have supported version MSVS installed. The CUDA documentation enumerates supported MSVS versions.

I don’t use IDEs and my (not very popular) recommendation is not to use them. To build a simple console application from a single source file test.cu, simply invoke:

nvcc -o test.exe test.cu

Done. As I said, to get this far you need to have supported version MSVS installed. The CUDA documentation enumerates supported MSVS versions.

To answer the stated question, there are “free” versions of Visual Studio 2015 (Community Edition) available which work with the current version of CUDA on Windows (the CUDA installer installs Nsight VSE which is a plugin for this IDE). This is explicitly stated in the CUDA windows install guide:

[url]Installation Guide Windows :: CUDA Toolkit Documentation

Microsoft has recently made it slightly harder to get the free (Community Edition) version of VS 2015, but it is still available:

[url]parallel processing - Using CUDA with Visual Studio 2017 - Stack Overflow

On linux, the linux CUDA installer will install a “free” version of Eclipse, which works with CUDA.

Thanks, I am installing Community 2015 now. I already installed Community 2017 and it requires computer restart/update before I can proceed to install 2015.

Thanks, where (which directory) should I type nvcc -o test.exe test.cu? Is there Windows environment setting needed to setup first? If so how?

Is there a Windows version of Eclipse worked with Cuda?

I don’t like to use most of the IDEs either, totally bloatwares with extra stuffs I don’t use. At school we use Unix and it is so much easier, we just use Nedit, Vi or Emacs editor to edit and command line to compile and run.

No.

You’re welcome to use the command line tools in windows if you wish. However:

  1. Their usage is undocumented by NVIDIA
  2. (IMO) it is still useful to have a basic understanding of VS project usage on windows, even if you intend to do most of your work at the command line. (see below)

The NVIDIA sample codes are all encapsulated in sample projects on windows, and:

  1. Sample projects are somewhat documented in the windows install guide (already linked above) - you are encouraged to follow the install guide all the way through the verification steps, before doing anything else with your CUDA install, including compiling from the command line.
  2. Studying the command lines generated during compilation of a visual studio project in Windows is a fairly straightforward way (IMO) to educate yourself about how to do command line code building in windows.

Good suggestion, thanks.