NVIDIA CUDA 12.9 is now available as the newest minor feature update to NVIDIA’s GPU compute stack. CUDA 12.9 adds compiler targetr support for SM 10.3 and 12.1, compiler support for “family-specific architectures”, new NVML counters being exposed, and other minor feature improvements. The NVIDIA CUDA 12.9 documentation is also now more verbose in encouraging anyone still relying on Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta hardware to upgrade.
Prior CUDA 12.x releases have carried the notice around these aging GPU architectures:
“Architecture support for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta is considered feature-complete and will be frozen in an upcoming release.”
With this week’s NVIDIA CUDA 12.9 release, the deprecation notice in the release notes for Maxwell / Pascal / Volta is now more forceful:
“Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures are now feature-complete with no further enhancements planned. While CUDA Toolkit 12.x series will continue to support building applications for these architectures, offline compilation and library support will be removed in the next major CUDA Toolkit version release. Users should plan migration to newer architectures, as future toolkits will be unable to target Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs.”
So for anyone really caring about NVIDIA GPU compute, it’s time to upgrade past Maxwell / Pascal / Volta. NVIDIA Maxwell being primarily the GTX 750 and GTX 900 series, Pascal the GTX 1000 series, and Volta the TITAN V / Quadro GV10.
The NVIDIA Linux driver support via their legacy driver branches will continue to be maintained by them, but for those really caring about first-rate CUDA support, now it’s time your to consider upgrading. Besides, there is much better performance and power efficiency in upgrading if you are a heavy CUDA compute user. There is life still available with these cards if using the open-source Nouveau driver stack, but these generations lack the NVIDIA GPU System Processor (GSP) and thus will be unsupported by the in-development NOVA driver. It’s also only with the Maxwell 1 (GTX 750 series) generation of these cards where there is no signed firmware requirement and thus where Nouveau can properly re-clock the graphics card due to the power management obstacles. For the other cards they are supported by the Nouveau driver and Nouveau Gallium3D / NVK Vulkan, but the performance is below that of using the official NVIDIA Linux driver stack.
