5.11. Unified Addressing

This section describes the unified addressing functions of the CUDA runtime application programming interface.

Overview

CUDA devices can share a unified address space with the host. For these devices there is no distinction between a device pointer and a host pointer -- the same pointer value may be used to access memory from the host program and from a kernel running on the device (with exceptions enumerated below).

Supported Platforms

Whether or not a device supports unified addressing may be queried by calling cudaGetDeviceProperties() with the device property cudaDeviceProp::unifiedAddressing.

Unified addressing is automatically enabled in 64-bit processes .

Unified addressing is not yet supported on Windows Vista or Windows 7 for devices that do not use the TCC driver model.

Looking Up Information from Pointer Values

It is possible to look up information about the memory which backs a pointer value. For instance, one may want to know if a pointer points to host or device memory. As another example, in the case of device memory, one may want to know on which CUDA device the memory resides. These properties may be queried using the function cudaPointerGetAttributes()

Since pointers are unique, it is not necessary to specify information about the pointers specified to cudaMemcpy() and other copy functions. The copy direction cudaMemcpyDefault may be used to specify that the CUDA runtime should infer the location of the pointer from its value.

Automatic Mapping of Host Allocated Host Memory

All host memory allocated through all devices using cudaMallocHost() and cudaHostAlloc() is always directly accessible from all devices that support unified addressing. This is the case regardless of whether or not the flags cudaHostAllocPortable and cudaHostAllocMapped are specified.

The pointer value through which allocated host memory may be accessed in kernels on all devices that support unified addressing is the same as the pointer value through which that memory is accessed on the host. It is not necessary to call cudaHostGetDevicePointer() to get the device pointer for these allocations.

Note that this is not the case for memory allocated using the flag cudaHostAllocWriteCombined, as discussed below.

Direct Access of Peer Memory

Upon enabling direct access from a device that supports unified addressing to another peer device that supports unified addressing using cudaDeviceEnablePeerAccess() all memory allocated in the peer device using cudaMalloc() and cudaMallocPitch() will immediately be accessible by the current device. The device pointer value through which any peer's memory may be accessed in the current device is the same pointer value through which that memory may be accessed from the peer device.

Exceptions, Disjoint Addressing

Not all memory may be accessed on devices through the same pointer value through which they are accessed on the host. These exceptions are host memory registered using cudaHostRegister() and host memory allocated using the flag cudaHostAllocWriteCombined. For these exceptions, there exists a distinct host and device address for the memory. The device address is guaranteed to not overlap any valid host pointer range and is guaranteed to have the same value across all devices that support unified addressing.

This device address may be queried using cudaHostGetDevicePointer() when a device using unified addressing is current. Either the host or the unified device pointer value may be used to refer to this memory in cudaMemcpy() and similar functions using the cudaMemcpyDefault memory direction.

Functions

__host__ ​cudaError_t cudaPointerGetAttributes ( cudaPointerAttributes* attributes, const void* ptr )
Returns attributes about a specified pointer.

Functions

__host__ ​cudaError_t cudaPointerGetAttributes ( cudaPointerAttributes* attributes, const void* ptr )
Returns attributes about a specified pointer.
Parameters
attributes
- Attributes for the specified pointer
ptr
- Pointer to get attributes for
Returns

cudaSuccess, cudaErrorInvalidDevice, cudaErrorInvalidValue

Description

Returns in *attributes the attributes of the pointer ptr. If pointer was not allocated in, mapped by or registered with context supporting unified addressing cudaErrorInvalidValue is returned.

Note:

In CUDA 11.0 forward passing host pointer will return cudaMemoryTypeUnregistered in cudaPointerAttributes::type and call will return cudaSuccess.

The cudaPointerAttributes structure is defined as: 

‎    struct cudaPointerAttributes {
              enum cudaMemoryType 
                  memoryType;
              enum cudaMemoryType 
                  type;
              int device;
              void *devicePointer;
              void *hostPointer;
              int isManaged;
          }
In this structure, the individual fields mean

  • device is the device against which ptr was allocated. If ptr has memory type cudaMemoryTypeDevice then this identifies the device on which the memory referred to by ptr physically resides. If ptr has memory type cudaMemoryTypeHost then this identifies the device which was current when the allocation was made (and if that device is deinitialized then this allocation will vanish with that device's state).

  • devicePointer is the device pointer alias through which the memory referred to by ptr may be accessed on the current device. If the memory referred to by ptr cannot be accessed directly by the current device then this is NULL.

  • hostPointer is the host pointer alias through which the memory referred to by ptr may be accessed on the host. If the memory referred to by ptr cannot be accessed directly by the host then this is NULL.

Note:

See also:

cudaGetDeviceCount, cudaGetDevice, cudaSetDevice, cudaChooseDevice, cuPointerGetAttributes