Program to check CUDA presence needs CUDA? - c++

Question

I wrote a simple application that checks if NVIDIA CUDA is available on the computer. It simply displays true if a CUDA-capable device is found.
I send the app to a second PC, and the application didn't run - a dialog box showed up that cudart.dll was not found. I want to check if CUDA is present and it requires CUDA to do that :)
I am using CUDA 5.0, VS2012, VC++11, Windows 7.
Can I compile the application in a way, that all CUDA libraries are inside the executable?
So the scenario is:
My app is compiled & sent to a computer
The computer can:
be running windows, linux (my app is compatible with the system)
have a gpu or not
have an nvidia gpu or not
have CUDA installed or not
My app should return true only if 2.3 and 2.4 are positive (GPU with CUDA)

Answer 1

As an opening comment, I think the order and number of steps in your edit is incorrect. It should be:
Programs starts and attempts to load the runtime API library
If the runtime library is present, attempt to use it to enumerate devices.
If step 1 fails, you do not have the necessary runtime support, and CUDA cannot be used. If 2 fails, there is not a compatible driver and GPU present in the system and CUDA cannot be used. If they both pass, you are good to go.
In step 1 you want to use something like dlopen on Linux and handle the return status. On Windows, you probably want to use the DLL delay loading mechanism (Sorry, not a Windows programmer, can't tell you more than that).
In both cases, if the library loads, then fetch the address of cudaGetDeviceCount via the appropriate host OS API and call it. That tells you whether there are compatible GPUs which can be enumerated. What you do after you find an apparently usable GPU is up to you. I would check for compute status and try establishing a context on it. That will ensure that a fully functional runtime/driver combination is present and everything works.

Answer 2

Linking to a different post on stackoverflow: detecting-nvidia-gpus-without-cuda
This shows the whole sequence to check if the cuda api is available and accessible.

Answer 3

I think that using only the software there is no reliable way to ensure that a GPU is Cuda-capable or not, especially if we consider that Cuda is a driver-based technology and for the OS Cuda doesn't exist if the driver says that Cuda doesn't exist.
I think that the best way to do this is the old fashion way, consider checking this simple web page and you will get a much more reliable answer.

Answer 4

create a plugin for your application that dynamically links to the relevant CUDA-libraries and performs the check.
then try loading the plugin and run it's check.
if the plugin fails to load, then you don't have the CUDA-libraries installed, so you can assume False
if the plugin succeeds to load, then you have CUDA-libs installed and can perform the check, whether the hardware supports CUDA as well.

Answer 5

As a late andditional answer:
I am struggling with the same problem (detecting cuda installation without using it) and my solution so far is
ensuring LoadLibraryA("nvcuda.dll") != nullptr (tells you pretty much only if there is an nvidia card installed, though)
checking for environment variable CUDA_PATH (or in my case, CUDA_PATH_V8_0), since that seems to be set by the cuda installation: const char * szCuda8Path = std::getenv("CUDA_PATH_V8_0"); (must be != nullptr)

Answer 6

Use cudaGetDeviceCount() to know if the computer is CUDA-capable.
According to this thread, you cannot statically link cudart.dll.
There are workarounds: embed the CUDA runtime as a resource in your executable, then extract it when your program runs, then dynamically link.
You can also use nvidia-smi to see if CUDA is installed on a machine.