Nvidia CUDA Compiler


Nvidia CUDA Compiler is a compiler by Nvidia intended for use with CUDA. It is proprietary software.

Compiler

CUDA code runs on both the central processing unit and graphics processing unit. NVCC separates these two parts and sends host code to a C compiler like GNU Compiler Collection or Intel C++ Compiler or Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler, and sends device code called "kernels" to the GPU. The device code is further compiled by NVCC. NVCC is based on LLVM. According to Nvidia provided documentation, nvcc in version 7.0 supports many language constructs that are defined by the C++11 standard, and a few from C99. In version 9.0, several more constructs from the C++14 standard are added.
Any source file containing CUDA language extensions must be compiled with nvcc. NVCC is a compiler driver which works by invoking all the necessary tools and compilers like cudacc, g++, cl, etc. NVCC can output either C code that must then be compiled with the rest of the application using another tool or Parallel Thread Execution or object code directly. An executable with CUDA code requires: the CUDA core library and the CUDA runtime library.
Other widely used libraries:
  • CUBLAS: BLAS implementation
  • CUFFT: FFT implementation
  • CUDPP : Reduction, Scan, Sort.
  • Thrust: Reduction, Scan, Sort.

    General

  1. David B. Kirk, and Wen-mei W. Hwu. Programming massively parallel processors: a hands-on approach. Morgan Kaufmann, 2010.
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