CUDA 2.1 Setup on Ubuntu 8.04

The Compute Unified Device Architecture is nVidia’s architecture and API for using graphics processors as powerful parallel supercomputers on the cheap.  Setting up the environment for developing with CUDA requires the installation of the CUDA driver, the CUDA toolkit, and the CUDA SDK.  The following is the process for setting up this environment in Ubuntu 8.04.

  1. Install the necessary build tools

    2. You may find that you need some additional development libraries depending on what is already installed on your system.
    sudo apt-get install build-essential libglut3-dev libxi-dev libxmu-dev

  2. Download the CUDA driver, Toolkit, and SDK from developer.nvidia.com
  3. Install the CUDA driver

    4. The nVidia driver cannot be installed while X is running, so you will need to stop gdm and install the driver in a virtual console by pressing ctrl+alt+F1. If you have already installed the Ubuntu restricted driver for your nVidia graphics card like I did, you will probably run into some trouble installing the CUDA driver. I solved my problems by following the nVidia driver manual installation guide here. The normal process if there are no conflicting drivers already installed are as follows.
    chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-xxx-pkg1.run
    sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
    sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-xxx-pkg1.run
    sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

  4. Install the CUDA toolkit

    5. chmod +x NVIDIA_CUDA_Toolkit_2.1_ubuntu8.04_x86.run
    sudo ./NVIDIA_CUDA_Toolkit_2.1_ubuntu8.06_x86.run

  5. Modify Environment Variables

    6. The simplest way to do this is to edit your ~/.bashrc file. Changes take effect when you start a new terminal session.
    PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/cuda/bin
    LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/cuda/lib
    export PATH
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

  6. Install the CUDA SDK

    7. chmod +x ./NVIDIA_CUDA_SDK_xxx_linux.run
    ./NVIDIA_CUDA_SDK_xxx_linux.run

  7. Compile and Run the example programs

    8. cd ~/NVIDIA_CUDA_SDK
    make

    Now execute any of the example programs in ~/NVIDIA_CUDA_SDK/bin/linux/release/

Check out http://lifeofaprogrammergeek.blogspot.com/2008/05/cuda-development-in-ubuntu.html for similar details and how to copy the template project and start coding your own CUDA program.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 12th, 2009 at 8:37 PM and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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