The core NVTX API is defined in file nvToolsExt.h, whereas CUDA-specific extensions to the NVTX interface are defined in nvToolsExtCuda.h and nvToolsExtCudaRt.h. On Linux the NVTX shared library is called libnvToolsExt.so and on Mac OSX the shared library is called libnvToolsExt.dylib. On Windows the library (.lib) and runtime components (.dll) are named nvToolsExt[bitness=32|64]_[version].{dll|lib}.
All NVTX API functions start with an nvtx name prefix and may end with one out of the three suffixes: A, W, or Ex. NVTX functions with these suffixes exist in multiple variants, performing the same core functionality with different parameter encodings. Depending on the version of the NVTX library, available encodings may include ASCII (A), Unicode (W), or event structure (Ex).
The CUDA implementation of NVTX only implements the ASCII (A) and event structure (Ex) variants of the API, the Unicode (W) versions are not supported and have no effect when called.
Some of the NVTX functions are defined to have return values. For example, the nvtxRangeStart() function returns a unique range identifier and nvtxRangePush() function outputs the current stack level. It is recommended not to use the returned values as part of conditional code in the instrumented application. The returned values can differ between various implementations of the NVTX library and, consequently, having added dependencies on the return values might work with one tool, but may fail with another.
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