CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxcuda
drjrm3
drjrm3

Reputation: 4718

Why do CUDA 6.5 examples not work with CUDA 5.5?

I have CUDA version I have is 5.5 as evidenced by the output of nvcc which is:

nvcc: NVIDIA (R) Cuda compiler driver
Copyright (c) 2005-2013 NVIDIA Corporation
Built on Wed_Jul_17_18:36:13_PDT_2013
Cuda compilation tools, release 5.5, V5.5.0

I am not yet using 6.5 since my NVIDIA driver is 331.113 (it is the Kubuntu 14.04 repo version which is how I installed everything).

I got the 6.5 examples and, for example, if I make the 2_graphics/Mandelbrot example, there are no compilation errors but when I run it, I get 

[CUDA Mandelbrot/Julia Set] - Starting...
CUDA error at ../../common/inc/helper_cuda.h:1032 code=35(cudaErrorInsufficientDriver) "cudaGetDeviceCount(&device_count)"

Now, if I just go into the examples/5.5/2_graphics/Mandelbrot directory and make the code, when I run it everything works fine.

What is happening when I get the cudaErrorInsufficientDriver error and what is the difference between these two Mandelbrot packages that would cause this error but not cause a compilation error?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 490

Answers (1)

Robert Crovella
Robert Crovella

Reputation: 151849

The app that you ran: 2_graphics/Mandelbrot was apparently compiled with CUDA 6.5 tools, i.e. nvcc, and most importantly it was linked against the CUDA 6.5 runtime library (cudart).

This library will, at initialization, check the driver version that is currently installed. If it is not a sufficient driver for CUDA 6.5, it will return an error on CUDA API calls.

If you had only CUDA 5.5 installed, and built the 2_graphics/Mandelbrot sample code only with CUDA 5.5 tools and libraries (even if the sample code itself came from the CUDA 6.5 distribution) most likely it would just work.

Upvotes: 2

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