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

[Thomas Dinges]

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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>
>