1. NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition User Guide

  NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition is a development environment for CUDA and graphics applications running on NVIDIA GPUs, which is integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio.

With NVIDIA Nsight VSE 2020.1, you can use the NVIDIA Nsight VSE CUDA Debugger, as well as Analysis and Profiling Tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio 2017, or Visual Studio 2019.

The NVIDIA Nsight VSE tools extend the debugging and performance analysis capabilities of Visual Studio to support GPU computing. NVIDIA Nsight VSE is useful in several different application areas, including:

  • Game development,

  • High-performance computing and supercomputing, and

  • Workstation and content creation software.

2. New Features in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2020.1

The 2020.1 release of NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition introduces the following:

  • NVIDIA Nsight Integration, a Visual Studio extension, has been introduced to allow next generation, standalone, Nsight tool integration into Visual Studio. In particular: 

    • Integrated Graphics Debugging, deprecated since NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2019.2, has been removed and replaced by Nsight Graphics.

    • Integrated CUDA profiling, deprecated since NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2019.2, has been removed from the Performance Analysis tools and replaced by: 

    • Integrated Analysis Trace, deprecated since NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2019.2, has not been removed, but will be in an upcoming release of NVIDIA Nsight VSE. The replacement, stand-alone Nsight Systems tool is currently available and works with NVIDIA Nsight Integration for Visual Studio.

  • OpenCL profiling support in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition, deprecated as of NVIDIA Nsight VSE 2019.4, has been removed.

  • Windows 7 (and WinServer through 2012R2) support, deprecated since 2019.4 release, has been removed.

  • Support for sm_30 and sm_32 architectures have been dropped and sm_35, sm_37, sm_50 support has been deprecated as of the 2020.1 release. The default compilation target is now sm_52 in NVIDIA Nsight VSE build customizations. (CTK-865)

  • Support for Visual Studio 2013 has been dropped. Current Visual Studio support includes versions 2015, 2017, and 2019.

3. CUDA Debugger

The CUDA Debugger helps you debug applications that use the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). You can set breakpoints in CUDA source code, inspect memory, view the values of local variables, perform memory checks, as well as other common debugging tasks. You can use the CUDA Debugger with applications built with the CUDA Runtime (CUDART) API or with the CUDA Driver API.

NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2020.1 introduces:

  • Added support for the NVIDIA GA100 GPU.

  • Supports for the CUDA 11.0 Toolkit.

  • Added ability to control breaking on and reporting CUDA API errors.

  • The Warp Watch view is now available in the Next-Gen Nsight Debugger.

  • The Resources view is now available in the Next-Gen Nsight Debugger.

  • CUDA Task Graph support has been added to the Next-Gen Nsight Debugger.

  • Support for Pascal has been dropped from the Legacy Nsight Debugger, but is fully supported by the Next-Gen Nsight Debugger.

4. Graphics Debugger

  • Integrated Graphics Debugging, deprecated since NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2019.2, has been removed and replaced by Nsight Graphics.

  • Note that NVIDIA Nsight Integration, a Visual Studio extension, has been introduced to allow Nsight Graphics integration into Visual Studio under the Nsight menu.

5. Analysis and Profiling Tools

The Analysis tools help you to understand how workloads are distributed across your application and your whole system. You can see API calls (including CUDA, OpenCL, DirectX, and OpenGL), memory copies, kernel executions, draw calls, and CPU/GPU activity events along a visual timeline.

NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition2020.1 introduces:

  • Integrated CUDA profiling, deprecated since NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2019.2, has been removed from the Performance Analysis tools and replaced by:

  • Integrated Analysis Trace, which has been deprecated since NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2019.2, has not been removed, but will be in an upcoming release of NVIDIA Nsight VSE. However, the replacement, stand-alone Nsight Systems tool is currently available and works with NVIDIA Nsight Integration for Visual Studio integration.

Notices

Notice

NVIDIA® Nsight™ Application Development Environment for Heterogeneous Platforms, Visual Studio Edition 2020.1 User GuideSend Feedback

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