NSIGHT COMPUTE

v2023.1.1 | March 2023

Release Notes
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1. Release Notes...................................................................................... 1

1.1. Updates in 2023.1.1......................................................................................1
1.2. Updates in 2023.1........................................................................................ 2
1.3. Updates in 2022.4.1......................................................................................3
1.4. Updates in 2022.4........................................................................................ 3
1.5. Updates in 2022.3........................................................................................ 4
1.6. Updates in 2022.2.1......................................................................................6
1.7. Updates in 2022.2........................................................................................ 6
1.8. Updates in 2022.1.1......................................................................................7
1.9. Updates in 2022.1........................................................................................ 8
1.10. Updates in 2021.3.1.................................................................................... 9
1.11. Updates in 2021.3.......................................................................................9
1.12. Updates in 2021.2.7................................................................................... 10
1.13. Updates in 2021.2.6................................................................................... 10
1.14. Updates in 2021.2.5................................................................................... 10
1.15. Updates in 2021.2.4................................................................................... 11
1.16. Updates in 2021.2.3................................................................................... 11
1.17. Updates in 2021.2.2................................................................................... 11
1.18. Updates in 2021.2.1................................................................................... 11
1.19. Updates in 2021.2..................................................................................... 11
1.20. Updates in 2021.1.1................................................................................... 13
1.21. Updates in 2021.1..................................................................................... 14
1.22. Older Versions.......................................................................................... 15
1.22.1. Updates in 2020.3.1..............................................................................15
1.22.2. Updates in 2020.3................................................................................ 15
1.22.3. Updates in 2020.2.1..............................................................................16
1.22.4. Updates in 2020.2................................................................................ 17
1.22.5. Updates in 2020.1.2..............................................................................18
1.22.6. Updates in 2020.1.1..............................................................................18
1.22.7. Updates in 2020.1................................................................................ 19
1.22.8. Updates in 2019.5.3..............................................................................20
1.22.9. Updates in 2019.5.2..............................................................................20
1.22.10. Updates in 2019.5.1............................................................................ 20
1.22.11. Updates in 2019.5...............................................................................20
1.22.12. Updates in 2019.4...............................................................................21
1.22.13. Updates in 2019.3.1............................................................................ 23
1.22.14. Updates in 2019.3...............................................................................23
1.22.15. Updates in 2019.2...............................................................................24
1.22.16. Updates in 2019.1...............................................................................25
Chapter 2. Known Issues...................................................................................... 27

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | ii
Chapter 3. Support............................................................................................. 31
3.1. Platform Support........................................................................................ 31
3.2. GPU Support..............................................................................................32
3.3. System Requirements................................................................................... 32

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | iii
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Platforms supported by NVIDIA Nsight Compute ................................................ 31

Table 2 GPU architectures supported by NVIDIA Nsight Compute ...................................... 32

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | iv
Chapter 1.
RELEASE NOTES

1.1. Updates in 2023.1.1

NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Added new configuration options to set the default view mode and precision for the
Source page.
Resolved Issues
‣ Added support for the DT_RUNPATH attribute when intercepting calls to dlopen.
Fixed issue for applications or libraries relying on DT_RUNPATH not finding all
dynamic libraries when launched by NVIDIA Nsight Compute.
‣ Improved interaction between custom additional metrics and the selected metric set.
Adding custom metrics no longer forces switching to the custom metric set.
‣ Added ability to gracefully skip folders with insufficient access permissions while
importing source code.
‣ Fixed the calculation of the peak values for the L1 and L2 cache bandwidths in the
hierarchical roofline charts.
‣ Fixed issue that prevented modules loaded with function
optixModuleCreateFromPTX showing up in the Optix: Modules table of the
Resources tool window.
‣ Fixed handling of deprecated functions when querying function pointers from the
OptiX interception library.
‣ Fixed that sometimes sections or rules couldn't be easily selected in the tool window.
‣ Fixed issue with Reset Application Data that prevented some setting from correctly
resetting.
‣ Fixed potential crash of NVIDIA Nsight Compute when Reset Application Data was
executed multiple times in a row.
‣ Fixed a crash when saving or loading baselines for non-kernel results.
‣ Fixed that memory written while executing a CUDA graph was not properly
restored in single-pass graph profiling.

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 1
 Release Notes

‣ Fixed potential memory leak while collecting SW counters for modules with
unpatched kernel functions.

1.2. Updates in 2023.1

General
‣ Added support for the CUDA toolkit 12.1.
‣ Added a new app-range replay mode to profile ranges without API capture by
relaunching the entire application multiple times.
‣ Added sharedBankConflicts sample CUDA application and document to show
how NVIDIA Nsight Compute can be used to analyze and identify the shared
memory bank conflicts which result in inefficient shared memory accesses. Refer
to the README.TXT file, sample code and document under extras/samples/
sharedBankConflicts.
‣ Jupyter notebook samples are available in the Nsight training github repository.
‣ The equivalent of the high-level Python report interface is now available in rule files.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Added support for profiling individual metrics in Interactive Profile activity. A new
input field for metrics was added in the Metric Selection tool window.
‣ Files on remote systems can be opened directly from the menu.
‣ Metric- and section-related entries in the menu, Profile activity and Metric Selection
tool window were renamed to make them more clear.
‣ CPU and GPU NUMA topology metrics can be collected on applicable systems.
Topology information is shown in a new NUMA Affinity section.
‣ Added content-aware suggestions to the Details page to provide suggestions based
on the selected profiling options.
‣ Added support for re-resolving source files on the Source page.
‣ Not-issued warp stall reasons are removed from the Source Counters section tables
and hidden by default on the Source page. Users should focus on regular warp stall
reasons by default and only inspect not-issued samples if this distinction is needed.
‣ Added support to search missing CUDA source files to permanently import into the
report using Source Lookup options in the Interactive Profile activity.
‣ The source page now shows metric values as percentages by default. New buttons
are added to support switching between different value modes.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Added support for config files in the current working or user directory to set default
ncu parameters. See the General options for more details.
‣ Added --range-filter command line option which allows to select subset of
enabled profile ranges.
‣ Added new --source-folders command line option that allows to recursively
search for missing CUDA source files to permanently import into the report.
Resolved Issues

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 2
 Release Notes

‣ Fixed performance issues on the Summary and Raw pages for large reports.
‣ Improved support for non-ASCII characters in filenames.
‣ Fixed an issue with delayed updates of assembly analysis information on the Source
page's Source and PTX views.
‣ Fixed potential crashes when using the Python report interface.

1.3. Updates in 2022.4.1

General
‣ Improved the documentation for the NvRules API.
‣ The python report interface links libstdc++ statically.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed an issue that enabled profiling on CUDA Graph uploads.
‣ Fixed formatting issues during unit conversion of metric instances.
‣ Fixed an issue that could lead to a crash during application replay.
‣ Fixed an issue that could lead to a crash in the python report interface.
‣ Fixed typos in the metrics reference documentation and descriptions.

1.4. Updates in 2022.4

General
‣ Added support for the CUDA toolkit 12.0.
‣ Added support for profiling CUDA graphs as complete workloads instead of as
single kernel nodes. Enable this using the Graph Profiling option in the activities.
Similarly to range replay results, selected metrics are not available when profiling
graphs.
‣ Added support for profiling on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2). See the
System Requirements for more details.
‣ Deprecated nv-nsight-cu and nv-nsight-cu-cli aliases are removed in favor of
ncu-ui and ncu.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ The Source page now loads disassembly and static analysis results asynchronously
in the background.
‣ Added a new Metric Details tool window to inspect metric information such as raw
value, unit, description or instance values. Open the tool window and select a metric
on the Details or Raw page or lookup any metric in the focused report directly in the
tool window's search bar.
‣ In the Source page PTX view, the source name will be shown as a list of comma-
separated files.
‣ Added flexibility with NVTX based filtering in the Next Trigger filter, similar to the
command line. Filters can now use nvtx-include and nvtx-exclude expressions by
adding the nvtx-include: or nvtx-exclude: prefix.

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 3
 Release Notes

‣ NVTX views now show the payload type.

‣ Simplified the command line generated by the Profile activity.
‣ Reduced the number of steps required to re-run the Profile activity.
‣ The way to rename Baselines in-place has been improved.
‣ The Resources tool window now shows the CUDA Dynamic Parallelism state for
CUDA functions and modules.
‣ OptiX traversable handles can now be exported as Graphviz DOT or SVG files for
visualization from the Resources tool window.
‣ All OptiX build, instance and geometry flags can be viewed in the Acceleration
Structure Viewer.
‣ Added OptiX-specific highlight filters to the Acceleration Structure Viewer.
‣ Added support for user-specified index strides to the Acceleration Structure Viewer.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Added new option --graph-profiling graph to enable profiling of complete
CUDA graphs as single workloads.
‣ Added new option --filter-mode per-launch-config to enable filtering of
kernel launches for each GPU launch parameter separately.
‣ Added support to print section body item metrics on the details page with the new
--print-details command line option.
‣ Added support to select what to show in Metric Name column on the details page
with the new --print-metric-name command line option.
‣ Removed deprecated options: --units, --fp, --summary and --kernel-base
‣ Added support to print launch, session, process and device attributes on session
page with the new --page session option.
‣ Added --kill yes support for application replay mode.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed an issue that NVIDIA Nsight Compute could crash when continuing profiling
after transposing the Raw page table.
‣ Fixed an issue that caused closing a report document to be delayed by pending
source analysis.
‣ Fixed support for profiling applications with older OptiX versions.
‣ Fixed display of OptiX module inputs for IR and built-in modules.

1.5. Updates in 2022.3

General
‣ Added support for the CUDA toolkit 11.8.
‣ Added support for the Ada GPU architecture.
‣ Added support for the Hopper GPU architecture.
‣ Added support for OptiX 7.6.
‣ Added uncoalescedGlobalAccesses sample CUDA application and document to show
how the NVIDIA Nsight Compute profiler can be used to analyze and identify the

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 Release Notes

memory accesses which are uncoalesced and result in inefficient DRAM accesses.
Refer to the README, sample code and document under extras/samples/
uncoalescedGlobalAccesses.
‣ Added Metrics Reference in the documentation that lists metrics not available
through --query-metrics.
‣ Reduced the overhead of collecting SASS-patching based metrics.
‣ On Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) configurations, NVIDIA Nsight Compute cannot lock
clocks anymore. Users are expected to lock clocks externally using nvidia-smi.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Wrapper script nv-nsight-cu is deprecated in favor of ncu-ui and will be
removed in a future release.
‣ Source page supports range replay results.
‣ Added a second chart on the Compute Workload Analysis section to avoid mixing
metrics with different meaning.
‣ NVIDIA Nsight Compute now tracks traversable handles created with
optixAccelRelocate.
‣ NVIDIA Nsight Compute now tracks traversable handles created as updates from
others.
‣ The Acceleration Structure viewer now reports unsupported inputs.
‣ The Acceleration Structure viewer now supports opening multiple traversable
handles.
‣ The Acceleration Structure viewer now uses OptiX naming for displayed elements.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Wrapper script nv-nsight-cu-cli is deprecated in favor of ncu and will be
removed in a future release.
‣ Added new option --filter-mode per-gpu to enable filtering of kernel launches
on each GPU separately.
‣ Added new option --app-replay-mode relaxed to produce profiling results for
valid kernels even if the number of kernel launches is inconsistent across application
replay passes.
‣ Added a documentation section on supported environment variables.
‣ Improved the performance when loading existing reports on the command line.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed an issue when resolving files on the Source page.
‣ Fixed an issue when profiling OptiX applications.
‣ Fixed an issue in the OptiX traversable handle management caused by clashing
handle values.
‣ Fixed an issue in the Acceleration Structure viewer causing the display of invalid
memory when viewing AABB buffers.

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 5
 Release Notes

1.6. Updates in 2022.2.1

Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed an issue that caused some tootips to not show up for the charts on the Details
page.
‣ Fixed the incorrect reporting of the accessed bytes for LDGSTS (access) traffic in the
L1TEX memory table.
‣ Fixed an issue that resulted in an empty view on the Source page after resolving
multiple source files at once.
‣ Fixed a failure to connect to remote machines over SSH due to a mismatch in the
configuration of data compression.
‣ Fixed a potential failure to profile kernels on multiple devices of the same type of
chip. The failure occurred on the attempt to profile on the second device.

1.7. Updates in 2022.2

General
‣ Added support for the CUDA toolkit 11.7.
‣ Improved performance for profiling and metric query.
‣ Added Linux (aarch64 sbsa) as a supported host platform.
‣ The NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI stores the command line arguments, which can
be viewed in the Session report page.
‣ Added an API to query the version of the Python Report and NvRules interfaces.
‣ Added an API to query the PTX in the Python Report and NvRules interfaces.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ The Acceleration Structure Viewer allows inspection of acceleration structures built
using the OptiX API for debugging and performance optimization.
‣ The Source page column chooser now supports to enable or disable groups of
metrics. Note that not all metrics are enabled anymore by default to make the view
easier to use.
‣ The Resources tool window now links to the exact target resource instances for
CUDA resource types.
‣ The Resources tool window now shows the instanced nodes for CUDA graphs.
‣ The Resources tool window now shows the loading state and number of loaded
functions for CUDA Modules.
‣ The Resources tool window now shows the graph node enablement state for
applicable instanced graph nodes.
‣ The Resources tool window now shows the graph node priorities for instanced
kernel graph nodes.
‣ Added regex support in the Next Trigger filter for NVTX based filtering. The Next
Trigger filter now considers the NVTX config as a regular expression if the regex:
prefix is specified.

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 Release Notes

‣ Added regex support in the report's Filter Results dialog.

‣ Added keyboard shortcuts to navigate between the pages in a report.
‣ The behavior for selecting sets and sections is now consistent between the Sections/
Rules Info window and the non-interactive profile activity.
‣ Reports can now be opened directly from the welcome dialog.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Added support for collecting sampling-based warp stalls in range replay mode.
‣ Added regex support in NVTX filtering.
‣ The metric type is shown when querying metrics.
Resolved Issues
‣ Reduced overhead of connecting to the host UI for non-interactive remote profiling
sessions.
‣ Fixed issues with persisting the Source page state when collapsing or switching
between results.
‣ Fixed an issue that locked GPU clocks were not reset when terminating the NVIDIA
Nsight Compute CLI while profiling a kernel.
‣ Fixed issues with selecting and copying text from the Details page tables.
‣ Fixed an issue with opening report files in the UI on MacOSX.
‣ Fixed an issue with the Freeze API option.

1.8. Updates in 2022.1.1

General
‣ Filtering kernel launches or profile results based on NVTX domains/ranges now
takes registered strings in the payload field into account, if the range name is empty.
‣ Added support for the suffix .max_rate for ratio metrics.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed a crash during the disassembly of the kernel's SASS code for the Source page.
‣ Fixed a crash on exit of the NVIDIA Nsight Compute UI.
‣ Fixed a hang during profiling when CPU call stack collection is enabled.
‣ Fixed missing to flush UVM buffers before taking memory checkpoints during
Range Replay.
‣ Fixed tracking of memory during Range Replay, if the CUDA context has any device
mapped memory allocations.
‣ Fixed the maximum available shared memory sizes in the Occupancy Calculator for
NVIDIA Ampere GPUs.
‣ Fixed that the shared memory usage of the kernel is incorrectly initialized when
opening the Occupancy Calculator from a profile report.

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 Release Notes

1.9. Updates in 2022.1

General
‣ Added support for the CUDA toolkit 11.6.
‣ Added support for GA103 chips.
‣ Added a new Range Replay mode to profile ranges of multiple, concurrent kernels.
Range replay is available in the NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI and the non-
interactive Profile activity.
‣ Added a new rule to detect non-fused floating-point instructions.
‣ The Uncoalesced Memory access rules now show results in a dynamic table.
‣ Unix Domain Sockets and Windows Named Pipes are used for local connection
between the host and target processes on x86_64 Linux and Windows, respectively.
‣ The NvRules API now supports querying action names using different function
name bases (e.g. demangled).
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ The default report page is now chosen automatically when opening a report.
‣ Added coverage for ECC (Error Correction Code) operations in the L2 Cache table of
the Memory Analysis section.
‣ Added a new L2 Evict Policies table to the Memory Analysis section.
‣ The Occupancy Calculator now updates automatically when the input changes.
‣ Added new metric Thread Instructions Executed to the Source page.
‣ Added tooltips to the Register Dependency columns in the Source page to identify
the associated register more conveniently.
‣ Improved the selection of Sections and Sets in the Profile activity connection dialog.
‣ NVLink utilization is shown in the NVLink Tables section.
‣ NVLink links are colored according to the measured throughput.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ --kernel-regex and --kernel-regex-base options are no longer supported.
Alternate options are --kernel-name and --kernel-name-base respectively,
added in 2021.1.0.
‣ Added support to resolve CUDA source files in the --page source output with the
new --resolve-source-file command line option.
‣ Added new option --target-processes-filter to filter the processes being
profiled by name.
‣ The CPU Stack Trace is shown in the NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI output.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed the calculation of aggregated average instruction execution metrics in non-
SASS views on the Source page.
‣ Fixed that atomic instructions are counted as both loads and stores in the Memory
Analysis tables.

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 Release Notes

1.10. Updates in 2021.3.1

Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed that kernels with the same name and launch configuration were in some
scenarios associated with the wrong profiling results during application replay.
‣ Fixed an issue with binary forward compatibility of the report format.
‣ Fixed an issue with applications calling into the CUDA API during process
teardown.
‣ Fixed an issue profiling application using pre-CUDA API 3.1 contexts.
‣ Fixed a crash when resolving files on the Source page.
‣ Fixed that opening reports with large embedded CUBINs would hang the UI.
‣ Fixed an issue with remote profiling on a target where the UI is already launched.

1.11. Updates in 2021.3

General
‣ Added support for the CUDA toolkit 11.5.
‣ Added a new rule for detecting inefficient memory access patterns in the L1TEX
cache and L2 cache.
‣ Added a new rule for detecting high usage of system or peer memory.
‣ Added new IAction::sass_by_pc function to the the NvRules API.
‣ The Python-based report interface is now available for Windows and MacOS hosts,
too.
‣ Added Hierarchical Roofline section files in a new "roofline" section set.
‣ Added support for collecting CPU call stack information.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Added support for new remote profiling SSH connection and authentication options
as well as local SSH configuration files.
‣ Added an Occupancy Calculator which can be opened directly from a profile report
or as a new activity. It offers feature parity to the CUDA Occupancy Calculator
spreadsheet.
‣ Added new Baselines tool window to manage (hide, update, re-order, save/load)
baseline selections.
‣ The Source page views now support multi-line/cell selection and copy/paste.
Different colors are used for highlighting selections and correlated lines.
‣ The search edit on the Source page now supports Shift+Enter to search in reverse
direction.
‣ The Memory Workload Analysis Chart can be configured to show throughput
values instead of transferred bytes.
‣ The Profile activity now supports the --devices option.
‣ The NVLink Topology diagram displays per NVLink metrics.

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 Release Notes

‣ Added a new tool window showing the CPU call stack at the location where the
current thread was suspended during interactive profiling activities.
‣ If enabled, the Call Stack / NVTX page of the profile report shows the captured CPU
call stack for the selected kernel launch.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Added support for printing source/metric content with the new --page source
and --print-source command line options.
‣ Added new option --call-stack to enable collecting the CPU call stack for every
profiled kernel launch.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed that memory_* metrics could not be collected with the --metrics option.
‣ Fixed that selection and copy/paste was not supported for section header tables on
the Details page.
‣ Fixed issues with the Source page when collapsing the content.
‣ Fixed that the UI could crash when applying rules to a new profile result.
‣ Fixed that PC Sampling metrics were not available for Profile Series.
‣ Fixed that local profiling did not work if no non-loopback address was configured
for the system.
‣ Fixed termination of remote-launched applications. On QNX, terminating an
application profiled via Remote Launch is now supported. Canceling remote-
launched Profile activities is now supported.

1.12. Updates in 2021.2.7

General
‣ Enabled stack canaries with random canary values for L4T builds.

1.13. Updates in 2021.2.6

Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed an issue causing a hang on QNX after pressing ctrl+c while profiling a
multi-process application.

1.14. Updates in 2021.2.5

Resolved Issues
‣ Improve the handling of the performance monitor reservation on mobile target
GPUs.

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 10
 Release Notes

1.15. Updates in 2021.2.4

Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed an issue that prevented remote interactive profiling of kernels on NVIDIA
GA10b chips.

1.16. Updates in 2021.2.3

General
‣ Added support for the NVIDIA GA10b chip.
Resolved Issues
‣ Improved error message on QNX for failure to deploy stock section and rules files.

1.17. Updates in 2021.2.2

General
‣ Changes for profiling support on NVIDIA virtual GPUs (vGPUs) for an upcoming
GRID/vGPU release.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed hang issue on QNX when using the --target-processes all option while
profiling shell scripts.

1.18. Updates in 2021.2.1

General
‣ Reduced the memory overhead when loading reports in the Python Report
Interface.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed that links in the Memory Allocations Resource view were not working correctly.
‣ Fixed that NVTX state might not be correctly reset between interactive profiling
activities.
‣ Fixed that the UI could crash when opening baselines from different GPU
architectures.

1.19. Updates in 2021.2

General

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 11
 Release Notes

‣ Added support for the CUDA toolkit 11.4.

‣ Added support for OptiX version 7.3.
‣ Added support for profiling on NVIDIA virtual GPUs (vGPUs) on an upcoming
GRID/vGPU release.
‣ Added a new Python-based report interface for interacting with report files from
Python scripts.
‣ Added a new rule to warn users when sampling metrics were selected, but no
sampling data was collected.
‣ Renamed SOL to Throughput in the Speed of Light section.
‣ Renamed several memory_* metrics used on the Source page, to better reflect the
measured value. See the Source page documentation for more details.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Added support for opening cubin files in a Standalone Source Viewer without
profiling the application.
‣ Moved the output of all rules so that it is visible even if a section's body is collapsed.
Visibility of the rules' output can be toggled by a new button in the report header.
‣ The profiler report header now shows the report name for each baseline when
ambiguous.
‣ Rules can define Focused Metrics that were most important for triggering their result
output. Metrics are provided per result message which additional information, such
as the underlying conditions and thresholds.
‣ Memory tables show tooltips for cells with derived metric calculations.
‣ Added a knowledge base service to show more comprehensive background
information on metric names and descriptions in their tooltips.
‣ Following a link in the Source Counters hot spot tables automatically selects the
corresponding metric in the Source page.
‣ Added new columns for visualizing register dependencies in the SASS view of the
Source page.
‣ Functions in the SASS view are now sorted by name.
‣ Added support for OptiX 7.x resource tracking in the interactive profile
activity. The Resources tool window will show information on instantiated
optixDeviceContexts, optixModules, optixProgramGroups,
optixPipelines and optixDenoiser objects.
‣ Added support for new CUDA graph memory allocation APIs.
‣ Improved consistency between command line parameters and the Next Trigger filter
in the API Stream window for handling of regex inputs. The Next Trigger filter now
considers kernel/API name as a regular expression only if string has regex: as
prefix.
‣ Added ability to select font settings in the options dialog.
‣ Added ability to configure the metrics shown on the summary page via the options
dialog.
‣ The selected heatmap color scale now also applies to the Memory chart.
‣ The ncu-ui script now checks for missing library dependencies, such as OpenGL or
Qt.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI

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 Release Notes

‣ Added environment variable

NV_COMPUTE_PROFILER_DISABLE_STOCK_FILE_DEPLOYMENT=1 to skip
deployment of section and rule files.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed a performance issue in the NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI when using --page
raw --csv --units auto.
‣ Fixed that the SSH passphase key is no longer persisted in the project file.
‣ Fixed state of restore button in connection dialog. The button now supports
restoring the default settings, if current setting differ from the default.
‣ Fixed that the complete GPU name can be shown in the NVLINK topology diagram
on MacOS.
‣ Fixed that collapsing the Source view reset the selected metrics.
‣ Fixed that correlated lines could differ between filtered and unfiltered views of the
executed functions.
‣ Fixed that two application icons were shown in the MacOS dock.
‣ Improved HiDPI awareness.

1.20. Updates in 2021.1.1

General
‣ Updated OpenSSL library to version 1.1.1k.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Remote source resolution can now use the IP address, in addition to the hostname,
to find the necessary SSH target.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Added support for the existing command line options for kernel filtering while
importing data from an existing report file using --import.
‣ Option -k is not considered as deprecated option --kernel-regex anymore.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed failure to profile kernels from applications that use the CUDA graphics
interop APIs to share semaphores.
‣ Fixed wavefront metric in the L1TEX table for writes to shared memory on GA10x
chips.
‣ Fixed an issue resulting in incomplete data collection for the interactive profile
activity after switching from single-pass mode to collecting multiple passes in the
same session.
‣ Fixed values shown in the mimimap of the Source page when all functions are
collapsed.
‣ Fixed an issue causing names set by the NVTX naming APIs of one application to be
applied to all subsequent sessions of the same instance of NVIDIA Nsight Compute.

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 Release Notes

‣ Fixed behavior of horizontal scroll bars when clicking in the source views on the
Source page.
‣ Fixed appearance of multi-line entries in column chooser on the Source page.
‣ Fixed enablement state of the reset button on the Connection dialog.
‣ Fixed potential crash of NVIDIA Nsight Compute when windows size becomes
small while being on the Source page.
‣ Fixed potential crash of NVIDIA Nsight Compute when relative paths for section/
rules files could not be found.
‣ Fixed potential crash of NVIDIA Nsight Compute after removing baselines.

1.21. Updates in 2021.1

General
‣ Added support for the CUDA toolkit 11.3.
‣ Added support for the OptiX 7 API.
‣ GpuArch enumeration values used for filtering in section files were renamed from
architecture names to compute capabilities.
‣ NVTX states can now be accessed via the NvRules API.
‣ Added a rule for the Occupancy section.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Added support for new CUDA asynchronous allocator attributes in the Memory
Pools resources view.
‣ Added a topology chart and link properties table in the NVLink section.
‣ The selected metric column is scrolled into view on the Source page when a new
metric is selected.
‣ Users can choose the Source heatmap color scale in the Options dialog.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Added file-based application replay as the new default application replay mode.
File-based replay uses a temporary file for keeping replay data, instead of allocating
them in memory. This keeps the required memory footprint close to constant,
independent of the number of profiled kernels. Users can switch between buffer
modes using the --app-replay-buffer option.
‣ CLI output now shows NVTX color and message information.
‣ --kernel-regex and --kernel-regex-base> options are deprecated and
replaced by --kernel-name and --kernel-regex-base, respectively.
‣ All options which support regex need to provide regex: as a prefix before an
argument to match per the regex, e.g <option> <regex:expression>
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed that baselines were not updated properly on the Comments page.
‣ Fixed that NVTX ranges named using their payloads can be used in NVTX filtering
expressions.
‣ Fixed crashes in MacOSX hosts when terminating the target application.

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 14
 Release Notes

‣ The NVLINK(nvl*) metrics are now added back.

1.22. Older Versions

1.22.1. Updates in 2020.3.1
General
‣ Added support for LDSM instruction-level metrics.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ LDSM instruction-level metrics are shown in the Source page and memory tables.
‣ Improved reporting and documentation for collecting Profile Series.
‣ Frozen columns in the Source page are automatically scrolled into view.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed an issue when profiling multi-threaded applications.
‣ Fixed an issue that NVIDIA Nsight Compute would not automatically restart when
using Reset Application Data.
‣ Fixed issues with target applications using libstdc++.
‣ Fixed an issue when collecting single-pass metrics in multiple Nsight Compute
instances.
‣ Fixed an issue when using Kernel ID and setting Launch Capture Count as non-zero in
the UI's Profile activity.
‣ Fixed an issue that prevented different users on the same Linux system to use
NVIDIA Nsight Compute in shared instance mode.
‣ Fixed an issue that prevented resources from being properly renamed using NVTX
information in the UI.

1.22.2. Updates in 2020.3

General
‣ Added support for derived metrics in section files. Derived metrics can be used to
create new metrics based on existing metrics and constants. See the Customization
Guide for details.
‣ Added a new Import Source (--import-source) option to the UI and command line
to permanently import source files into the report, when available.
‣ Added a new section that shows selected NVLink metrics on supported systems.
‣ Added a new launch__func_cache_config metric to the Launch Statistics section.
‣ Added new branch efficiency metrics to the Source Counters section, including
smsp__sass_average_branch_targets_threads_uniform.pct
to replace nvprof's branch_efficiency, as well as instruction-
level metrics smsp__branch_targets_threads_divergent,
smsp__branch_targets_threads_uniform and branch_inst_executed.

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 15
 Release Notes

‣ A warning is shown if kernel replay starts staging GPU memory to CPU memory or
the file system.
‣ Section and rule files are deployed to a versioned directory in the user's home
directory to allow easier editing of those files, and to prevent modifying the base
installation.
‣ Removed support for NVLINK(nvl*) metrics due to a potential application hang
during data collection. The metrics will be added back in a future version of the
driver/tool.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Added support for Profile Series. Series allow you to profile a kernel with a range of
configurable parameters to analyze the performance of each combination.
‣ Added a new Allocations view to the Resources tool window which shows the state of
all current memory allocations.
‣ Added a new Memory Pools view to the Resources tool window which shows the state
of all current memory pools.
‣ Added coverage of peer memory to the Memory Chart.
‣ The Source page now shows the number of excessive sectors requested from L1 or
L2, e.g. due to uncoalesced memory accesses.
‣ The Source column on the Source page can now be scrolled horizontally.
‣ The kernel duration gpu__time_duration.sum was added as column on the
Summary page.
‣ Improved the performance of application replay when not all kernels in the
application are profiled.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Added a new --app-replay-match option to select the mechanism used for
matching kernel instances across application replay passes.
‣ An error is shown if --nvtx-include/exclude are used without --nvtx.
Resolved Issues
‣ The Grid Size column on the Raw page now shows the CUDA grid size like the
Launch Statistics section, rather than the combined grid and block sizes.
‣ The Branch Resolving wap stall reason was added to the PC sampling metric groups
and the Warp State Statistics section.
‣ The API Stream tool window shows kernel names according to the selected Function
Name Mode.
‣ Fixed that an incorrect line could be shown after a heatmap selection on the Source
page.
‣ Fixed incorrect metric usage for system memory in the Memory Chart. Previously,
all requested memory of L2 from system memory was reported instead of only the
portion that missed in L2.

1.22.3. Updates in 2020.2.1

Resolved Issues

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 16
 Release Notes

‣ Fixed several issues related to auto-profiling in the UI.

‣ Fixed a metric collection issue when profiling kernels on different GPU architectures
with application replay.
‣ Fixed a performance problem related to profiling large process trees.
‣ Fixed that occupancy charts would not render correctly when comparing against
baselines.
‣ Fixed that no memory metrics were shown on the Source page for LDGSTS
instructions.
‣ Fixed the automatic sorting on the Summary and Raw pages.
‣ Fixed an issue that would cause the NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI to consume too
much memory when importing or printing reports.
‣ Long kernel names are now elided in the Details page source hot spot tables.
‣ Fixed that function names in the Resources tool window were demangled differently.

1.22.4. Updates in 2020.2

General
‣ Added support for the NVIDIA Ampere GPUs with compute capability 8.6 and
CUDA toolkit 11.1.
‣ Added support for application replay to collect metric results across multiple
application runs, instead of replaying individual kernels.
‣ Added new launch__device_id metric.
‣ Added support for NVLink (nvl*) metrics for GPUs with compute capabilities 7.0,
7.5 and 8.0
‣ Added documentation for memory charts and tables in the Profiling Guide.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Updated menu and toolbar layout.
‣ Added support for zoom and pan on roofline charts.
‣ The Resources tool window shows the current CUDA stream attributes.
‣ The memory chart shows a heatmap for link and port utilization.
‣ The hot-spot tables in the Source Counters section now show values as percentages,
too.
‣ On-demand resolve of remote CUDA-C source is now available for MacOS hosts.
‣ Metric columns in the Summary and Raw pages are now sortable.
‣ Added a new option to set the number of recent API calls shown in the API Stream
tool window.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ CLI output now shows NVTX payload information.
‣ CSV output now shows NVTX states.
‣ Added a new --replay-mode option to select the mechanism used for replaying a
kernel launch multiple times.
‣ Added a new --kill option to terminate the application once all requested kernels
were profiled.

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 17
 Release Notes

‣ Added a new --log-file option to decide the output stream for printing tool
output.
‣ Added a new --check-exit-code option to decide if the child application exit
code should be checked.
Resolved Issues
‣ The profiling progress dialog is not dismissed automatically anymore after an error.
‣ The inter-process lock is now automatically given write permissions for all users.
‣ All project extensions are enabled in the default dialog filter.
‣ Fixed handling of targets using tcsh during remote profiling.
‣ Fixed handling of quoted application arguments on Windows.

1.22.5. Updates in 2020.1.2

General
‣ The NVIDIA Nsight Compute installer for Mac is now code-signed and notarized.
‣ Disabled the creation of the Python cache when executing rules to avoid permission
issues and signing conflicts.
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed the launcher script of the NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI to no longer fail if
uname -p is not available.
‣ Fixed the API parameter capture for function cuDeviceGetLuid.

1.22.6. Updates in 2020.1.1

General
‣ Metrics passed to --metrics on the NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI or in the
respective Profile activity option are automatically expanded to all first-level sub-
metrics if required. See the documentation on --metrics for more details.
‣ Added new rules for detecting inefficiencies of using the sparse data compression
on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture.
‣ The version of the NVIDIA Nsight Compute target collecting the results is shown in
the Session page.
‣ Added new launch__grid_dim_[x,y,z] and launch__block_dim_[x,y,z]
metrics.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ The Break on API Error functionality has been improved when auto profiling.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ The full path to the report output file is printed after profiling.
‣ Added and corrected metrics in the nvprof Metric Comparison table.
Resolved Issues
‣ Documented the breakdown: metrics prefix.

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 18
 Release Notes

‣ Fixed handling of escaped domain delimiters in NVTX filter expressions.

‣ Fixed issues with the occupancy charts for small block sizes.
‣ Fixed an issue when choosing a default report page in the options dialog.
‣ Fixed that the scroll bar could overlap the content when exporting the report page as
an image.

1.22.7. Updates in 2020.1

General
‣ Added support for the NVIDIA GA100/SM 8.x GPU architecture
‣ Removed support for the Pascal SM 6.x GPU architecture
‣ Windows 7 is not a supported host or target platform anymore
‣ Added a rule for reporting uncoalesced memory accesses as part of the Source
Counters section
‣ Added support for report name placeholders %p, %q, %i and %h
‣ The Kernel Profiling Guide was added to the documentation
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ The UI command was renamed from nv-nsight-cu to ncu-ui. Old names remain
for backwards compatibility.
‣ Added support for roofline analysis charts
‣ Added linked hot spot tables in section bodies to indicate performance problems in
the source code
‣ Added section navigation links in rule results to quickly jump to the referenced
section
‣ Added a new option to select how kernel names are shown in the UI
‣ Added new memory tables for the L1/TEX cache and the L2 cache. The old tables are
still available for backwards compatibility and moved to a new section containing
deprecated UI elements.
‣ Memory tables now show the metric name as a tooltip
‣ Source resolution now takes into account file properties when selecting a file from
disk
‣ Results in the profile report can now be filtered by NVTX range
‣ The Source page now supports collapsing views even for single files
‣ The UI shows profiler error messages as dismissible banners for increased visibility
‣ Improved the baseline name control in the profiler report header
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ The CLI command was renamed from nv-nsight-cu-cli to ncu. Old names
remain for backwards compatibility.
‣ Queried metrics on GV100 and newer chips are sorted alphabetically
‣ Multiple instances of NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI can now run concurrently
on the same system, e.g. for profiling individual MPI ranks. Profiled kernels are
serialized across all processes using a system-wide file lock.
Resolved Issues

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 19
 Release Notes

‣ More C++ kernel names can be properly demangled

‣ Fixed a free(): invalid pointer error when profiling applications using
pytorch > 19.07
‣ Fixed profiling IBM Spectrum MPI applications that require PAMI GPU hooks (--
smpiargs="-gpu")
‣ Fixed that the first kernel instruction was missed when computing
sass__inst_executed_per_opcode
‣ Reduced surplus DRAM write traffic created from flushing caches during kernel
replay
‣ The Compute Workload Analysis section shows the IMMA pipeline on GV11b GPUs
‣ Profile reports now scroll properly on MacOS when using a trackpad
‣ Relative output filenames for the Profile activity now use the document directory,
instead of the current working directory
‣ Fixed path expansion of ~ on Windows
‣ Memory access information is now shown properly for RED assembly instructions
on the Source page
‣ Fixed that user PYTHONHOME and PYTHONPATH environment variables would be
picked up by NVIDIA Nsight Compute, resulting in locale encoding issues.

1.22.8. Updates in 2019.5.3

General
‣ More C++ kernel names can be properly demangled

1.22.9. Updates in 2019.5.2

General
‣ Bug fixes

1.22.10. Updates in 2019.5.1

General
‣ Added support for Nsight Compute Visual Studio Integration

1.22.11. Updates in 2019.5

General
‣ Added section sets to reduce the default overhead and make it easier to configure
metric sets for profiling
‣ Reduced the size of the installation
‣ Added support for CUDA Graphs Recapture API
‣ The NvRules API now supports accessing correlation IDs for instanced metrics
‣ Added breakdown tables for SOL SM and SOL Memory in the Speed Of Light section
for Volta+ GPUs
NVIDIA Nsight Compute

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 20
 Release Notes

‣ Added a snap-select feature to the Source page heatmap help navigate large files
‣ Added support for loading remote CUDA-C source files via SSH on demand for
Linux x86_64 targets
‣ Charts on the Details page provide better help in tool tips when hovering metric
names
‣ Improved the performance of the Source page when scrolling or collapsing
‣ The charts for Warp States and Compute pipelines are now sorted by value
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Added support for GPU cache control, see --cache-control
‣ Added support for setting the kernel name base in command line output, see --
kernel-base
‣ Added support for listing the available names for --chips, see --list-chips
‣ Improved the stability on Windows when using --target-processes all
‣ Reduced the profiling overhead for small metric sets in applications with many
kernels
Resolved Issues
‣ Reduced the overhead caused by demangling kernel names multiple times
‣ Fixed an issue that kernel names were not demangled in CUDA Graph Nodes
resources window
‣ The connection dialog better disables unsupported combinations or warns of invalid
entries
‣ Fixed metric thread_inst_executed_true to derive from
smsp_not_predicated_off_thread_inst_executed on Volta+ GPUs
‣ Fixed an issue with computing the theoretical occupancy on GV100
‣ Selecting an entry on the Source page heatmap no longer selects the respective
source line, to avoid losing the current selection
‣ Fixed the current view indicator of the Source page heatmap to be line-accurate
‣ Fixed an issue when comparing metrics from Pascal and later architectures on the
Summary page
‣ Fixed an issue that metrics representing constant values on Volta+ couldn't be
collected without non-constant metrics

1.22.12. Updates in 2019.4

General
‣ Added support for the Linux PowerPC target platform
‣ Reduced the profiling overhead, especially if no source metrics are collected
‣ Reduced the overhead for non-profiled kernels
‣ Improved the deployment performance during remote launches
‣ Trying to profile on an unsupported GPU now shows an "Unsupported GPU" error
message
‣ Added support for the %i sequential number placeholder to generate unique report
file names

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 21
 Release Notes

‣ Added support for smsp__sass_* metrics on Volta and newer GPUs

‣ The launch__occupancy_limit_shared_mem now reports the device block limit if no
shared memory is used by the kernel
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ The Profile activity shows the command line used to launch ncu
‣ The heatmap on the Source page now shows the represented metric in its tooltip
‣ The Memory Workload Analysis Chart on the Details page now supports baselines
‣ When applying rules, a message displaying the number of new rule results is shown
in the status bar
‣ The Visual Profiler Transition Guide was added to the documentation
‣ Connection dialog activity options were added to the documentation
‣ A warning dialog is shown if the application is resumed without Auto-Profile
enabled
‣ Pausing the application now has immediate feedback in the toolbar controls
‣ Added a Close All command to the File menu
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ The --query-metrics option now shows only metric base names for faster metric
query. The new option --query-metrics-mode can be used to display the valid
suffixes for each base metric.
‣ Added support for passing response files using the @ operator to specify command
line options through a file
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed an issue that reported the wrong executable name in the Session page when
attaching
‣ Fixed issues that chart labels were shown elided on the Details page
‣ Fixed an issue that caused the cache hitrates to be shown incorrectly when baselines
were added
‣ Fixed an illegal memory access when collecting sass__*_histogram metrics for
applications using PyTorch on Pascal GPUs
‣ Fixed an issue when attempting to collect all smsp__* metrics on Volta and newer
GPUs
‣ Fixed an issue when profiling multi-context applications
‣ Fixed that profiling start/stop settings from the connection dialog weren't properly
passed to the interactive profile activity
‣ Fixed that certain smsp__warp_cycles_per_issue_stall* metrics returned negative
values on Pascal GPUs
‣ Fixed that metric names were truncated in the --page details non-CSV
command line output
‣ Fixed that the target application could crash if a connection port was used by
another application with higher privileges

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 22
 Release Notes

1.22.13. Updates in 2019.3.1

NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Added ability to send bug reports and suggestions for features using Send Feedback
in the Help menu
Resolved Issues
‣ Fixed calculation of theoretical occupancy for grids with blocks that are not a
multiple of 32 threads
‣ Fixed intercepting child processes launched through Python's subprocess.Popen
class
‣ Fixed issue of NVTX push/pop ranges not showing up for child threads in NVIDIA
Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Fixed performance regression for metric lookups on the Source page
‣ Fixed description in rule covering the IMC stall reason
‣ Fixed cases were baseline values were not correctly calculated in the Memory tables
when comparing reports of different architectures
‣ Fixed incorrect calculation of baseline values in the Executed Instruction Mix chart
‣ Fixed accessing instanced metrics in the NvRules API
‣ Fixed a bug that could cause the collection of unnecessary metrics in the Interactive
Profile activity
‣ Fixed potential crash on exit of the profiled target application
‣ Switched underlying metric for SOL FB in the GPU Speed Of Light section to be
driven by dram__throughput.avg.pct_of_peak_sustained_elapsed instead
of fbpa__throughput.avg.pct_of_peak_sustained_elapsed

1.22.14. Updates in 2019.3

General
‣ Improved performance
‣ Bug fixes
‣ Kernel launch context and stream are reported as metrics
‣ PC sampling configuration options are reported as metrics
‣ The default base port for connections to the target changed
‣ Section files support multiple, named Body fields
‣ NvRules allows users to query metrics using any convertible data type
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Support for filtering kernel launches using their NVTX context
‣ Support for new options to select the connection port range
‣ The Profile activity supports configuring PC sampling parameters
‣ Sections on the Details page support selecting individual bodies
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 23
 Release Notes

‣ Support for stepping to kernel launches from specific NVTX contexts

‣ Support for new --port and --max-connections options
‣ Support for new --sampling-* options to configure PC sampling parameters
‣ Section file errors are reported with --list-sections
‣ A warning is shown if some section files could not be loaded
Resolved Issues
‣ Using the --summary option works for reports that include invalid metrics
‣ The full process executable filename is reported for QNX targets
‣ The project system now properly stores the state of opened reports
‣ Fixed PTX syntax highlighting
‣ Fixed an issue when switching between manual and auto profiling in NVIDIA
Nsight Compute
‣ The source page in NVIDIA Nsight Compute now works with results from multiple
processes
‣ Charts on the NVIDIA Nsight Compute details page uses proper localization for
numbers
‣ NVIDIA Nsight Compute no longer requires the system locale to be set to English

1.22.15. Updates in 2019.2

General
‣ Improved performance
‣ Bug fixes
‣ Kernel launch context and stream are reported as metrics
‣ PC sampling configuration options are reported as metrics
‣ The default base port for connections to the target changed
‣ Section files support multiple, named Body fields
‣ NvRules allows users to query metrics using any convertible data type
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Support for filtering kernel launches using their NVTX context
‣ Support for new options to select the connection port range
‣ The Profile activity supports configuring PC sampling parameters
‣ Sections on the Details page support selecting individual bodies
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Support for stepping to kernel launches from specific NVTX contexts
‣ Support for new --port and --max-connections options
‣ Support for new --sampling-* options to configure PC sampling parameters
‣ Section file errors are reported with --list-sections
‣ A warning is shown if some section files could not be loaded
Resolved Issues
‣ Using the --summary option works for reports that include invalid metrics

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 24
 Release Notes

‣ The full process executable filename is reported for QNX targets

‣ The project system now properly stores the state of opened reports
‣ Fixed PTX syntax highlighting
‣ Fixed an issue when switching between manual and auto profiling in NVIDIA
Nsight Compute
‣ The source page in NVIDIA Nsight Compute now works with results from multiple
processes
‣ Charts on the NVIDIA Nsight Compute details page uses proper localization for
numbers
‣ NVIDIA Nsight Compute no longer requires the system locale to be set to English

1.22.16. Updates in 2019.1

General
‣ Support for CUDA 10.1
‣ Improved performance
‣ Bug fixes
‣ Profiling on Volta GPUs now uses the same metric names as on Turing GPUs
‣ Section files support descriptions
‣ The default sections and rules directory has been renamed to sections
NVIDIA Nsight Compute
‣ Added new profiling options to the options dialog
‣ Details page shows rule result icons in the section headers
‣ Section descriptions are shown in the details page and in the sections tool window
‣ Source page supports collapsing multiple source files or functions to show
aggregated results
‣ Source page heatmap color scale has changed
‣ Invalid metric results are highlighted in the profiler report
‣ Loaded section and rule files can be opened from the sections tool window
NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI
‣ Support for profiling child processes on Linux and Windows x86_64 targets
‣ NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI uses a temporary file if no output file is specified
‣ Support for new --quiet option
‣ Support for setting the GPU clock control mode using new --clock-control
option
‣ Details page output shows the NVTX context when --nvtx is enabled
‣ Support for filtering kernel launches for profiling based on their NVTX context
using new --nvtx-include and --nvtx-exclude options
‣ Added new --summary options for aggregating profiling results
‣ Added option --open-in-ui to open reports collected with NVIDIA Nsight
Compute CLI directly in NVIDIA Nsight Compute
Resolved Issues

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 25
 Release Notes

‣ Installation directory scripts use absolute paths

‣ OpenACC kernel names are correctly demangled
‣ Profile activity report file supports a relative path
‣ Source view can resolve all applicable files at once
‣ UI font colors are improved
‣ Details page layout and label elision issues are resolved
‣ Turing metrics are properly reported on the Summary page
‣ All byte-based metrics use a factor of 1000 when scaling units to follow SI standards
‣ CSV exports properly align columns with empty entries
‣ Fixed the metric computation for double_precision_fu_utilization on GV11b
‣ Fixed incorrect 'selected' PC sampling counter values
‣ The SpeedOfLight section uses 'max' instead of 'avg' cycles metrics for Elapsed
Cycles

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 26
Chapter 2.
KNOWN ISSUES

Installation
‣ The installer might not show all patch-level version numbers during installation.
‣ Some command line options listed in the help of a .run installer of NVIDIA Nsight
Compute are affecting only the archive extraction, but not the installation stage. To
pass command line options to the embedded installer script, specify those options
after -- in the form of -- -<option>. The available options for the installer script
are:

-help : Print help message

-targetpath=<PATH> : Specify install path
-noprompt : No prompts. Implies acceptance of the EULA

For example, specifying only option --quiet extracts the installer archive
without any output to the console, but still prompts for user interaction during the
installation. To install NVIDIA Nsight Compute without any console output nor any
user interaction, please specify --quiet -- -noprompt.
‣ After using the SDK Manager to install the NVIDIA Nsight Compute tools, their
binary path needs to be manually added to your PATH environment variable.
‣ See also the System Requirements for more installation instructions.
Launch and Connection
‣ Launching applications on remote targets/platforms is not supported for several
combinations. See Platform Support for details. Manually launch the application
using command line ncu --mode=launch on the remote system and connect using
the UI or CLI afterwards.
‣ In the NVIDIA Nsight Compute connection dialog, a remote system can only be
specified for one target platform. Remove a connection from its current target
platform in order to be able to add it to another.
‣ Loading of CUDA sources via SSH requires that the remote connection is
configured, and that the hostname/IP address of the connection matches the
target (as seen in the report session details). For example, prefer my-machine.my-
domain.com, instead of my-machine, even though the latter resolves to the same.

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 27
 Known Issues

‣ Other issues concerning remote connections are discussed in the documentation for
remote connections.
‣ Local connections between NVIDIA Nsight Compute and the launched
target application might not work on some ppc64le or aarch64 (sbsa)
systems configured to only support IPv6. On these platforms, the
NV_COMPUTE_PROFILER_LOCAL_CONNECTION_OVERRIDE=uds
environment variable can be set to use Unix Domain Sockets instead of TCP for
local connections to workaround the problem. On x86_64 Linux, Unix Domain
Sockets are used by default, but local TCP connections can be forced using
NV_COMPUTE_PROFILER_LOCAL_CONNECTION_OVERRIDE=tcp.
Profiling and Metrics
‣ Profiling of 32-bit processes is not supported.
‣ Profiling kernels executed on a device that is part of an SLI group is not supported.
An "Unsupported GPU" error is shown in this case.
‣ Profiling a kernel while other contexts are active on the same device (e.g. X server,
or secondary CUDA or graphics application) can result in varying metric values for
L2/FB (Device Memory) related metrics. Specifically, L2/FB traffic from non-profiled
contexts cannot be excluded from the metric results. To completely avoid this issue,
profile the application on a GPU without secondary contexts accessing the same
device (e.g. no X server on Linux).
‣ In the current release, profiling a kernel while any other GPU work is executing on
the same MIG compute instance can result in varying metric values for all units.
NVIDIA Nsight Compute enforces serialization of the CUDA launches within
the target application to ensure those kernels do not influence each other. See
Serialization for more details. However, GPU work issued through other APIs in the
target process or workloads created by non-target processes running simultaneously
in the same MIG compute instance will influence the collected metrics. Note that it is
acceptable to run CUDA processes in other MIG compute instances as they will not
influence the profiled MIG compute instance.
‣ On Linux kernels settings fs.protected_regular=1 (e.g. some Ubuntu 20.04
cloud service provider instances), root users may not be able to access the inter-
process lock file. See the FAQ for workarounds.
‣ Profiling only supports up to 32 device instances, including instances of MIG
partitions. Profiling the 33rd or higher device instance will result in indeterminate
data.
‣ Enabling certain metrics can cause GPU kernels to run longer than the driver's
watchdog time-out limit. In these cases the driver will terminate the GPU kernel
resulting in an application error and profiling data will not be available. Please
disable the driver watchdog time out before profiling such long running CUDA
kernels.
‣ On Linux, setting the X Config option Interactive to false is recommended.
‣ For Windows, detailed information on disabling the Windows TDR is available
at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/display/
timeout-detection-and-recovery
‣ Collecting device-level metrics, such as the NVLINK metrics (nvl*), is not
supported on NVIDIA virtual GPUs (vGPUs).

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Nsight Compute v2023.1.1 | 28
 Known Issues

‣ As of CUDA 11.4 and R470 TRD1 driver release, NVIDIA Nsight Compute is
supported in a vGPU environment which requires a vGPU license. If the license is
not obtained after 20 minutes, the reported performance metrics data from the GPU
will be inaccurate. This is because of a feature in vGPU environment which reduces
performance but retains functionality as specified here.
‣ Profiling on NVIDIA live-migrated virtual machines is not supported and can result
in undefined behavior.
‣ Profiling with enabled multi-process service (MPS) can result in undefined behavior.
‣ The NVLink Topology section is not supported for a configuration using NVSwitch.
‣ NVIDIA Nsight Compute does not support per-NVLink metrics.
‣ NVIDIA Nsight Compute does not support the Logical NVLink Throughput table.
‣ Profiling CUDA graph kernel nodes that can launch device graphs or are part of
device-launchable graphs is not supported. Use Graph Profiling mode instead.
‣ On CUDA drivers older than 530.x, profiling on Windows Subsystem for Linux
(WSL) is not supported if the system has multiple physical NVIDIA GPUs. This is
not affected by setting CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES.
Compatibility
‣ Applications calling blocking functions on std input/output streams can result in the
profiler to stop, until the blocking function call is resolved.
‣ NVIDIA Nsight Compute can hang on applications using RAPIDS in versions 0.6
and 0.7, due to an issue in cuDF.
‣ Profiling child processes launched via clone() is not supported.
‣ Profiling child processes launched from Python using os.system() is not
supported.
‣ Profiling of Cooperative Groups kernels launched with
cuLaunchCooperativeKernelMultiDevice is not yet supported.
‣ On Linux systems, when profiling bsd-csh scripts, the original application output
will not be printed. As a workaround, use a different C-shell, e.g. tcsh.
‣ Attempting to use the --clock-control option to set the GPU clocks will
fail when profiling on a GPU partition. Please use nvidia-smi (installed with
NVIDIA display driver) to control the clocks for the entire GPU. This will require
administrative privileges when the GPU is partitioned.
‣ On Linux aarch64, NVIDIA Nsight Compute does not work if the HOME
environment variable is not set.
‣ NVIDIA Nsight Compute versions 2020.1.0 to 2020.2.1 are not compatible with
CUDA driver version 460+ if the application launches Cooperative Groups kernels.
Profiling will fail with error "UnknownError".
‣ Collecting CPU call stack information on Windows Server 2016 can hang NVIDIA
Nsight Compute in some cases. Currently, the only workaround is to skip CPU call
stack collection on such systems by not specifying the option --call-stack.
‣ When profiling a script, --target-processes all may target utility executables
such as xargs, uname or ls. To avoid profiling these, use the --target-processes-
filter option accordingly.
‣ On mobile platforms, --kill option is not supported with application replay mode.
User Interface

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 Known Issues

‣ The API Statistics filter in NVIDIA Nsight Compute does not support units.
‣ File size is the only property considered when resolving source files. Timestamps
are currently ignored.
‣ Terminating or disconnecting an application in the Interactive Profiling activity while
the API Stream View is updated can lead to a crash.
‣ See the OptiX library support section for limitations concerning the Acceleration
Structure Viewer.
‣ After updating from a previous version of NVIDIA Nsight Compute on Linux, the
file load dialog may not allow column resizing and sorting. As a workaround, the
~/.config/QtProject.conf file can be edited to remove the treeViewHeader entry from the
[FileDialog] section.

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Chapter 3.
SUPPORT

Information on supported platforms and GPUs.

3.1. Platform Support

Host denotes the UI can run on that platform. Target means that we can instrument
applications on that platform for data collection. Applications launched with
instrumentation on a target system can be connected to from most host platforms. The
reports collected on one system can be opened on any other system.

Table 1 Platforms supported by NVIDIA Nsight Compute

Host Targets
Windows Yes Windows*, Linux (x86_64)
Windows Subsystem for Yes Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) as part of the
Linux (WSL2) Linux (x86_64) package.
Linux (x86_64) Yes Windows*, Linux (x86_64), Linux (ppc64le), Linux
(aarch64 sbsa)
Linux (ppc64le) No Linux (ppc64le)
Linux (aarch64 sbsa) Yes Linux (aarch64 sbsa)
Linux (x86_64) (Drive Yes Windows*, Linux (x86_64), Linux (aarch64), QNX
SDK)
MacOSX 10.15+ Yes Windows*, Linux (x86_64), Linux (ppc64le)
Linux (aarch64) No Linux (aarch64)
QNX No QNX

Target platforms marked with * do not support remote launch from the respective host.
Remote launch means that the application can be launched on the target system from the
host UI. Instead, the application must be launched from the target system.
Profiling of 32-bit processes is not supported.

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 Support

3.2. GPU Support

Table 2 GPU architectures supported by NVIDIA Nsight Compute

Architecture Support
Kepler No
Maxwell No
Pascal No
Volta GV100 Yes
Volta GV11b Yes
Turing TU1xx Yes
NVIDIA GA100 Yes
NVIDIA GA10x Yes
NVIDIA GA10b Yes
NVIDIA AD10x Yes
NVIDIA GH100 Yes

Most metrics used in NVIDIA Nsight Compute are identical to those of the PerfWorks
Metrics API and follow the documented Metrics Structure. A comparison between the
metrics used in nvprof and their equivalent in NVIDIA Nsight Compute can be found in
the NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI User Manual.

3.3. System Requirements

Linux and WSL
On all Linux platforms, NVIDIA Nsight Compute CLI requires GLIBC version 2.15
or higher. On x86_64, the NVIDIA Nsight Compute UI requires GLIBC version 2.17
or higher. On Linux (aarch64 sbsa), the NVIDIA Nsight Compute UI requires GLIBC
version 2.26 or higher.
The NVIDIA Nsight Compute UI requires several packages to be installed to enable
Qt. Please refer to the Qt for X11 Requirements. When executing ncu-ui with missing
dependencies, an error message with information on the missing packages is shown.
Note that only one package will be shown at a time, even though multiple may be
missing from your system. For selected operating systems, the following commands
install needed packages for NVIDIA Nsight Compute on X11:

‣ Ubuntu 18.04

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 Support

apt install libopengl0 libxcb-icccm4 libxcb-image0 libxcb-

keysyms1 libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-xkb1 libxkbcommon-x11-0
‣ Ubuntu 20.04
apt install libopengl0 libxcb-icccm4 libxcb-image0 libxcb-
keysyms1 libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-xkb1
libxkbcommon-x11-0
‣ RHEL 8.6
yum install libglvnd-opengl libxcb libxkbcommon-x11

Profiling on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is only supported with WSL version
2, NVIDIA display driver version 525 or higher and Windows 11. The Linux (x86_64)
NVIDIA Nsight Compute package can be used and should be installed directly within
WSL2. Remote profiling to and from WSL2 works equivalently to regular Linux (x86_64)
hosts and targets, as long as it's accessible via SSH. Access to NVIDIA GPU Performance
Counters must be enabled in the NVIDIA Control Panel of the Windows host. See also
the CUDA on WSL User Guide.

Windows
Only Windows 10 and 11 are supported as host and target.
The Visual Studio 2017 redistributable is not automatically installed by the NVIDIA
Nsight Compute installer. The workaround is to install the x64 version of the 'Microsoft
Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017' manually. The installer is linked on
the main download page for Visual Studio at https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/
or download directly from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=746572.

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Notice
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without express written approval of NVIDIA Corporation.

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Copyright
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This product includes software developed by the Syncro Soft SRL (http://
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