CUDA Toolkit Release Notes
CUDA Toolkit Release Notes
Release 12.1
NVIDIA
2 New Features 9
2.1 General CUDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 CUDA Compilers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3 CUDA Developer Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4 Known Issues 13
4.1 General CUDA Known Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2 CUDA Compiler Known Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5 CUDA Libraries 15
5.1 cuBLAS Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.1.1 cuBLAS: Release 12.0 Update 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.1.2 cuBLAS: Release 12.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.2 cuFFT Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.2.1 cuFFT: Release 12.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.2.2 cuFFT: Release 12.0 Update 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.2.3 cuFFT: Release 12.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.3 cuSPARSE Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.3.1 cuSPARSE: Release 12.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.3.2 cuSPARSE: Release 12.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.4 Math Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.4.1 CUDA Math: Release 12.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.4.2 CUDA Math: Release 12.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.5 NVIDIA Performance Primitives (NPP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.5.1 NPP: Release 12.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.6 nvJPEG Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.6.1 nvJPEG: Release 12.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6 Notices 21
6.1 Notice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.2 OpenCL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.3 Trademarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
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Release Notes, Release 12.1
Note: The release notes have been reorganized into two major sections: the general CUDA release
notes, and the CUDA libraries release notes including historical information for 12.x releases.
Contents 1
Release Notes, Release 12.1
2 Contents
Chapter 1. CUDA Toolkit Major
Component Versions
CUDA Components Starting with CUDA 11, the various components in the toolkit are versioned inde-
pendently.
For CUDA 12.1, the table below indicates the versions:
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Release Notes, Release 12.1
CUDA Driver Running a CUDA application requires the system with at least one CUDA capable GPU
and a driver that is compatible with the CUDA Toolkit. See Table 3. For more information various
GPU products that are CUDA capable, visit https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus.
Each release of the CUDA Toolkit requires a minimum version of the CUDA driver. The CUDA driver
is backward compatible, meaning that applications compiled against a particular version of the
CUDA will continue to work on subsequent (later) driver releases.
More information on compatibility can be found at https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/
cuda-c-best-practices-guide/index.html#cuda-compatibility-and-upgrades.
Note: Starting with CUDA 11.0, the toolkit components are individually versioned, and the toolkit
itself is versioned as shown in the table below.
The minimum required driver version for CUDA minor version compatibility is shown be-
low. CUDA minor version compatibility is described in detail in https://docs.nvidia.com/deploy/
cuda-compatibility/index.html
1 Only available on select Linux distros
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Release Notes, Release 12.1
* Using a Minimum Required Version that is different from Toolkit Driver Version could be allowed in
compatibility mode – please read the CUDA Compatibility Guide for details.
** CUDA 11.0 was released with an earlier driver version, but by upgrading to Tesla Recommended
Drivers 450.80.02 (Linux) / 452.39 (Windows), minor version compatibility is possible across the CUDA
11.x family of toolkits.
The version of the development NVIDIA GPU Driver packaged in each CUDA Toolkit release is shown
below.
For convenience, the NVIDIA driver is installed as part of the CUDA Toolkit installation. Note that this
driver is for development purposes and is not recommended for use in production with Tesla GPUs.
For running CUDA applications in production with Tesla GPUs, it is recommended to download the
latest driver for Tesla GPUs from the NVIDIA driver downloads site at https://www.nvidia.com/drivers.
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Release Notes, Release 12.1
During the installation of the CUDA Toolkit, the installation of the NVIDIA driver may be skipped on
Windows (when using the interactive or silent installation) or on Linux (by using meta packages).
For more information on customizing the install process on Windows, see https://docs.nvidia.com/
cuda/cuda-installation-guide-microsoft-windows/index.html#install-cuda-software.
For meta packages on Linux, see https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-installation-guide-linux/index.
html#package-manager-metas.
This section lists new general CUDA and CUDA compilers features.
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Release Notes, Release 12.1
Features deprecated in the current release of the CUDA software still work in the current release,
but their documentation may have been removed, and they will become officially unsupported in a
future release. We recommend that developers employ alternative solutions to these features in their
software.
General CUDA
▶ None.
CUDA Tools
▶ None.
CUDA Compiler
▶ None.
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Release Notes, Release 12.1
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Release Notes, Release 12.1
This section covers CUDA Libraries release notes for 12.x releases.
▶ CUDA Math Libraries toolchain uses C++11 features, and a C++11-compatible standard library
(libstdc++ >= 20150422) is required on the host.
▶ Support for the following compute capabilities is removed for all libraries:
▶ sm_35 (Kepler)
▶ sm_37 (Kepler)
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Release Notes, Release 12.1
▶ New Features
▶ JIT LTO functionalities (cusparseSpMMOp()) switched from driver to nvJitLto library. Start-
ing from CUDA 12.0 the user needs to link to libnvJitLto.so, see cuSPARSE documenta-
tion. JIT LTO performance has also been improved for cusparseSpMMOpPlan().
▶ Introduced const descriptors for the Generic APIs, for example, cusparseConst-
SpVecGet(). Now the Generic APIs interface clearly declares when a descriptor and its
data are modified by the cuSPARSE functions.
▶ Added two new algorithms to cusparseSpGEMM() with lower memory utilization. The first
algorithm computes a strict bound on the number of intermediate product, while the second
one allows partitioning the computation in chunks.
▶ Added int8_t support to cusparseGather(), cusparseScatter(), and cuspar-
seCsr2cscEx2().
▶ Improved cusparseSpSV() performance for both the analysis and the solving phases.
▶ Improved cusparseSpSM() performance for both the analysis and the solving phases.
▶ Improved cusparseSDDMM() performance and added support for batch computation.
▶ Improved cusparseCsr2cscEx2() performance.
▶ Resolved Issues
▶ cusparseSpSV() and cusparseSpSM() could produce wrong results.
▶ cusparseDnMatGetStridedBatch() did not accept batchStride == 0.
▶ Deprecations
▶ Removed deprecated CUDA 11.x APIs, enumerators, and descriptors.
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21
Release Notes, Release 12.1
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6.2. OpenCL
OpenCL is a trademark of Apple Inc. used under license to the Khronos Group Inc.
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22 Chapter 6. Notices