CUDA on Mac OS X 10.6.8, GeForce 9400M

Question

My run time system gives an error "CUDA driver version is insufficient for CUDA runtime version" when I try to run CUDA programs on Mac OS X 10.6.8 installed with CUDA ToolKit 5.0 (CUDA driver: 5.0.45) and GPU driver: 1.6.36.10 for GeForce 900M. I was unable to locate the correct (updated) GPU drivers for GeForce 900M at NVIDIA site. Kindly suggest a solution.

Answer 1

A given CUDA version (e.g. 5.0) has a minimum GPU driver version associated with it. Any newer version should work, but versions older than the minimum driver version will give an error, as you are seeing.

based on my memory:

• cuda 4.0: 270.41.19
• cuda 5.0: 304.54
• cuda 5.5: 319.37

The above may be approximate, but it gives you an idea. For CUDA 4.0, for example, any GPU driver that is 270.41.19 or newer should work. An older driver (like 256.02) would not work. I don't recall the minimum driver versions for other CUDA versions, but it's not difficult to determine, by visiting the various CUDA download pages.

The most recent driver for your platform appears to be 256.02. Even CUDA 4.0 requires 270.41.19 or newer. So the most recent CUDA version you could use with 256.02 would be CUDA 3.2 The solution in that case, would be to upgrade your GPU driver to 256.02, and remove the CUDA 5.0 toolkit and install CUDA 3.2.

CUDA 3.2 is pretty old, so there will be many features that will be unavailable in that version. You'll want to have appropriate versions of the documentation, which will be installed on your machine along with the CUDA toolkit (e.g. in /usr/local/cuda/doc or similar)