Cuda Nvidia 3.0.1 Installation Notes on Macbook Air / Macbook Pro 11/28/2009

Cuda Nvidia 3.0.1 Installation Notes on Macbook Air / Pro 11/28/2009

Agents require two processor technologies (CPU - right brain and GPU - left brain).  We use nvidia's Cuda GPU Computing engine for left brain processing.  The great thing about Cuda is that even though future production systems may require performance capabilities not yet available, with the availability of Cuda 3.0, the new code can be compiled and run on millions of nvidia equiped PC's today.

If working with Snow Leopard on a MacBook (I installed on Macbook Air Mac OS X 10.6.2 2GB RAM), install the 3.0 Beta
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=149959

Here are my environment variables:

To edit, type:
pico ~/.bash_profile

Paste the following at the end of your file

#Add Cuda to Path, Note $cudasdk is not needed ... just a shortcut for me
export SDK_INSTALL_PATH=/Developer/GPU_Computing
export cudasdk=$SDK_INSTALL_PATH
export CUDA_HOME=/usr/local/cuda
export PATH=$PATH:PATH=$CUDA_HOME/bin
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$CUDA_HOME/lib

If you are upgrading, clean out the old installation first:
sudo rm -r /usr/local/cuda/*

Before you install, to avoid issues, and the general hassle of typing paths with spaces, change the name of the install directory (when installing the SDK) from the default (/Developer/GPU Computing) to /Developer/GPU_Computing by choosing Customize.  You may want to create the directory first:

mkdir /Developer/GPU_Computing

Follow the install instructions from both these documents (making sure to Customize the SDK install as above):

here
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/3_0-Beta1/sdk/docs/CUDA_SDK_Release_Notes.txt

and here 
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/3_0-Beta1/docs/CUDA_Getting_Started_3.0-beta1_MacOS.pdf

Unlike 2.3 (where I ran into several install problems, 3.0 was relatively smooth)

Note that you don't need to copy libcutil.a (or the include file) to the /$cudasdk/C/lib directory as they say in the Getting Started Guide

One issue I found after completing the above and verifying the installation per the Getting Started Guide, was that I couldn't run the bandwidthTest Program without getting an out of memory error.

I found that if you are running with multiple displays, you may be maxing out your GPU memory (and thus unable to run programs),

To fix this, reduce your display resolution or set your displays to mirrored mode (click Apple Menu, System Preferences, Displays, Arrangement tab, click Mirror Displays).  I have an external 23" monitor with a 1920x1200 default resolution.  By setting this display to 1280x1024, I was still able to have dual displays (external and MacBookAir) and run test programs.  Note, for best GPU bandwidth performance, Mirror the displays.

Hope this helps.

Warren