Building and Running a cuDNN Dependent Program

Building a cuDNN Dependent Program

Because cuDNN uses symbols defined in external libraries, you need to ensure that the linker can locate these libraries while building a cuDNN dependent program. One way to achieve this is by explicitly specifying them on the linker command.

Linker Dependencies for the Dynamic cuDNN Libs

Linux: Add -lz to the linker command.
Windows: No additional linker flags are required for Windows.

Linker Dependencies for the Static cuDNN Libs

Linux: Add -lcublasLt_static -lz -lnvrtc_static -lnvrtc-builtins_static -lnvptxcompiler_static -lcudart_static to the linker command.
Windows: Not applicable. Static cuDNN libs for Windows are not supported.

Running a cuDNN Dependent Program

While running a cuDNN dependent program, in addition to the paths to the directory of cuDNN, make sure to add the path to the directory of the following libraries to the environment variable $LD_LIBRARY_PATH on Linux, or to the environment variable %PATH% on Windows.

Linux

libz.so (required by ld.so at load-time)

libcublasLt.so (required by dlopen() at runtime when using certain convolution engines, legacy convolution APIs, RNN APIs, and legacy multihead attention APIs)

libnvrtc.so (required by dlopen() at runtime when using runtime-compiled engines)

Windows

cublasLt*.dll (required by LoadLibraryA() at runtime when using certain convolution engines, legacy convolution APIs, RNN APIs, and legacy multihead attention APIs)

nvrtc*.dll (required by LoadLibraryA() at runtime when using runtime-compiled engines)

Inter-Library Dependencies

Since cuDNN is split into several libraries, dependencies between them need to be taken into account. For more information, refer to the API Library Overview.