Overview#
Use the NVIDIA cuDNN backend API only if you want to use the legacy fixed-function routines that are not graph-based interfaces and are not exposed by the frontend API layers. Otherwise, use the NVIDIA cuDNN frontend API. which provides a simplified programming model that is sufficient for most use cases.
In cuDNN version 7 and older, the API (now referred to as the legacy API) was designed to support a fixed set of operations and fusion patterns. In cuDNN version 8, the Graph API was introduced to address the quickly expanding set of popular fusion patterns. The Graph API allows the user to express a computation by defining an operation graph. For most use cases, the Graph API is the recommended way to use cuDNN as it offers greater flexibility than the legacy API.