Conclusion

The CUDA driver maintains backward compatibility to continue support of applications built on older toolkits. Using a compatible minor driver version, applications build on CUDA Toolkit 11 and newer are supported on any driver from within the corresponding major release. Using the CUDA Forward Compatibility package, system administrators can run applications built using a newer toolkit even when an older driver that does not satisfy the minimum required driver version is installed on the system. This forward compatibility allows the CUDA deployments in data centers and enterprises to benefit from the faster release cadence and the latest features and performance of CUDA Toolkit.

CUDA compatibility helps users by:

• Faster upgrades to the latest CUDA releases: Enterprises or data centers with NVIDIA GPUs have complex workflows and require advance planning for NVIDIA driver rollouts. Not having to update the driver for newer CUDA releases can mean that new versions of the software can be made available faster to users without any delays.

• Faster upgrades of the CUDA libraries: Users can upgrade to the latest software libraries and applications built on top of CUDA (for example, math libraries or deep learning frameworks) without an upgrade to the entire CUDA Toolkit or driver. This is possible as these libraries and frameworks do not have a direct dependency on the CUDA runtime, compiler or driver.