Introduction to NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition

Welcome to NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition, a development environment for CUDA applications, integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio.

1. NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition User Guide

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

With NVIDIA Nsight™ VSE , you can use the NVIDIA Nsight™ VSE CUDA Debugger in Microsoft Visual Studio[1] 2017 or 2019.

The NVIDIA Nsight™ VSE tools extend the debugging 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.

[1] Support for Visual Studio 2015, deprecated since 2020.2.0, has been dropped as of 2020.3.0.

2. CUDA Debugger

The CUDA Debugger helps you debug applications that use the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). Along with debugging native CPU code, 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.

3. New Features in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2021.1.1

The 2021.1.1 release of NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition introduces the following:

  • General

    • Supports CUDA Toolkit 11.3 Update 1.

  • CUDA Debugger

    • Bug fixes and performance improvements.

4. New Features in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2021.1.0

The 2021.1.0 release of NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition introduces the following:

  • General

    • Supports the latest NVIDIA Ampere GPUs, including GA106.

    • Supports CUDA Toolkit 11.3.

  • CUDA Debugger

    • Allow viewing of SASS Indexed Constants.

    • Added Memory Allocations to the Resources view.

    • Bug fixes and performance improvements.

6. New Features in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2020.3.1

The 2020.3.1 release of NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition introduces the following:

  • General

    • Supports CUDA Toolkit 11.2 Update 1.

  • CUDA Debugger

    • Bug fixes and performance improvements.

7. New Features in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2020.3.0

The 2020.3.0 release of NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition introduces the following:

  • General

    • Supports CUDA Toolkit 11.2.

    • Support for Visual Studio 2015, which has been deprecated since 2020.2.0, has been removed. Current Visual Studio support still includes versions 2017 and 2019.

  • CUDA Debugger

    • Supports CUDA Parallel Launch.

    • Supports Visual Studio breakpoint hit count.

    • New Memory Allocations view, providing information on CUDA global memory allocations.

8. New Features in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2020.2.1

The 2020.2.1 release of NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition introduces the following:

  • General

    • Supports CUDA Toolkit 11.1 Update 1.

  • Important Fixes

    • Some builds of Visual Studio 2019 had performance impacts when Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2020.2.0 was installed (possibly from CUDA Toolkit 11.1).

9. New Features in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2020.2.0

The 2020.2.0 release of NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition introduces the following:

  • General

    • Support for GA102 and GA104.

    • Support CUDA Toolkit 11.1.

    • Support for Microsoft Windows 10 Hardware Scheduling.

    • Support for Visual Studio 2015 is being deprecated and will be dropped in an upcoming release. Current Visual Studio support still includes versions 2015, 2017, and 2019.

  • CUDA Debugger

    • Debugger Performance improvements, especially when loading modules.

    • New debugger option to 'Break on API Errors'.

    • New debugger option to 'Break on Launch'.

  • Analysis

    • Integrated Analysis Trace, deprecated since NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2019.2, has been removed. The replacement, stand-alone Nsight Systems tool is currently available and works with NVIDIA Nsight Integration for Visual Studio.

10. New Features in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2020.1.2

The 2020.1.2 release of NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition introduces the following:

  • This was a bug fix release, primarily for fixing Debugger core dump issues.

11. New Features in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition 2020.1.1

The 2020.1.1 release of NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition introduces the following:

  • General

    • Support for GA100.

    • Support CUDA Toolkit 11.0

    • Support for Microsoft Windows 10 Hardware Scheduling.

    • 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. NVIDIA Nsight™ VSE 2020.1.1 Visual Studio support includes versions 2015, 2017, and 2019.

    • 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.

  • CUDA Debugger

    • 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.

  • Graphics

    • 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.

  • Analysis

    • 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.

    • OpenCL profiling support in NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition, deprecated as of NVIDIA Nsight™ VSE 2019.3, has been removed.

Notices

Notice

NVIDIA® Nsight™ Application Development Environment for Heterogeneous Platforms, Visual Studio Edition 2021.1.1 User GuideSend Feedback

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