Different CUDA versions shown by nvcc and NVIDIA-smi

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53422407/different-cuda-versions-shown-by-nvcc-and-nvidia-smi

Different CUDA versions shown by nvcc and NVIDIA-smi

 

CUDA has 2 primary APIs, the runtime and the driver API. Both have a corresponding version (e.g. 8.0, 9.0, etc.)

The necessary support for the driver API (e.g. libcuda.so on linux) is installed by the GPU driver installer.

The necessary support for the runtime API (e.g. libcudart.so on linux, and also nvcc) is installed by the CUDA toolkit installer (which may also have a GPU driver installer bundled in it).

In any event, the (installed) driver API version may not always match the (installed) runtime API version, especially if you install a GPU driver independently from installing CUDA (i.e. the CUDA toolkit).

The nvidia-smi tool gets installed by the GPU driver installer, and generally has the GPU driver in view, not anything installed by the CUDA toolkit installer.

Recently (somewhere between 410.48 and 410.73 driver version on linux) the powers-that-be at NVIDIA decided to add reporting of the CUDA Driver API version installed by the driver, in the output from nvidia-smi.

This has no connection to the installed CUDA runtime version.

nvcc, the CUDA compiler-driver tool that is installed with the CUDA toolkit, will always report the CUDA runtime version that it was built to recognize. It doesn't know anything about what driver version is installed, or even if a GPU driver is installed.

Therefore, by design, these two numbers don't necessarily match, as they are reflective of two different things.

If you are wondering why nvcc -V displays a version of CUDA you weren't expecting (e.g. it displays a version other than the one you think you installed), it may be because you haven't followed the mandatory instructions in step 7 of the cuda linux install guide