[Bf-committers] CUDA Toolkit Update (Windows + Linux)

[Thomas Dinges]

As 2.73 will be mainly a maintenance release, I would ask you to update the Toolkit on the Buildbots (Linux and Windows), so we can enable the sm_52 kernel.
Further changes (like fatbin) can go to 2.74. 

I would appreciate it Sergey and Martijn. :) 

Thanks,
Thomas

Am 23.11.2014 um 08:42 schrieb Thomas Dinges <blender at dingto.org>:

> Fixing SSS would of course be the best solution, but I think that is 
> more a long term project.
> I think for now we should just build the extra sm_52 kernel. Although I 
> like your last suggestion as well (build fatbin and let users of sm5x 
> optimize themselves).
> 
> Some further food for fought:
> * We only support sm_20 and above (Geforce 400 series), which was 
> released in 2010. I think 4-8 GB RAM was pretty standard back then already.
> * We could save some kernel compilation time for 32bit Blender, by 
> dropping CUDA support there. I don't think that GPU rendering + 32bit 
> environment is common. And again, we only have to look back to 2010. 
> 64bit CPUs + OS were common back then already.
> 
> Am 20.11.2014 um 09:55 schrieb Sergey Sharybin:
>> Technically it's easy. The only thing which is worrying is we'll have 12
>> kernels to be compiled now.
>> 
>> Just to mention, fatbin is not gonna to help really. The thing here is ptx
>> is really fast to compile, it's optimization to a specific arch takes loads
>> of ram and time, So if we ship ptx with just ptx that'd mean users would
>> need to have 8 gig to be able to get optimized code (which then being
>> cached btw). it's not that nice at all.
>> 
>> We can also look into making SSS more or less stable on GPU, or just
>> declare GPUs not being feature-full. CMJ i don't think would give any
>> issues btw.
>> 
>> Another idea could be optimizing sm_20-sm_35 in the fatbin, users of sm_50,
>> sm_52 would optimize on first render. They probably have enough ram for
>> this :) A bit cruel i know, just throwing ideas for brainstorm of how to
>> improve the situation.
>> 
>> P.S. i don't mean we shouldn't switch to fatbin, that'd help making blender
>> users to early users of new GPUs.
>> 
>> On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 3:41 AM, Thomas Dinges <blender at dingto.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hey,
>>> in order to support Geforce 9xx cards optimally, we should update the
>>> CUDA Toolkit (Release & Buildbot) and compile native sm_52 kernels.
>>> 
>>> Sergey, Martijn, can you please update the buildbots?
>>> https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads-geforce-gtx9xx
>>> This version is equal to the 6.5.14 we use atm, but adds support for
>>> sm_52. So it should be a smooth and safe update.
>>> 
>>> There is no version for Mac, but I think the 9xx cards are not available
>>> yet for Mac anyway.
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Thomas
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>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
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