GPU on Mac does not work.

Hi, I am new to working with the GPU parallel computing capacity of Matlab, so I am a bit in uncharted waters here... I am trying to use the GPU capacity of my mac (MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2009; OSX 10.11.6), which still came with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M video card (!), for parallel computing. Installed recommended CUDA version (CUDA Driver Version: 7.5.27) and NVDIA driver (version; 346.03.15.f.16), and tried to use some Matlab examples to see if it would fire up:

    if true
      %  A = gpuArray([1 0 1; -1 -2 0; 0 1 -1]);
    end

It returned the following error message:

"There is a problem with the graphics driver or with this GPU device. Be sure that you have a supported GPU and that the latest driver is installed.

Error in parallel.internal.gpu.deviceCount Error in parallel.gpu.GPUDevice.count (line 26) c = parallel.internal.gpu.deviceCount;

Error in gpuDeviceCount (line 14) n = parallel.gpu.GPUDevice.count;

Caused by: The CUDA driver was found, but the function 'cuDriverGetVersion' returned an error. The error returned was: CUDA_ERROR_NOT_INITIALIZED"

So am I correct to understand that it looks as if the drivers are found but the GPU is not found? The GPU appears to be working fine, so what else?

Any ideas/suggestions for me how I should move on?

Thanks!

Barry

[John D'Errico]

Which MATLAB release? You might check this page to start:

https://www.mathworks.com/discovery/matlab-gpu.html

[B Janssen]

Hi John, I'm using R2018a. Thanks for the link; I'll check it out! Barry

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

R2018a requires a 9 series cuda driver, but the maximum available for osx 10.11 was an 8 series driver. You will not be able to use gpu unless you go back to an earlier release.

Note: your version of MATLAB is the last one that supports your osx version.

(I am in the same situation.)

[B Janssen]

Hi Walter, Thanks for the heads up; I was just considering the upgrade to 2018b! Actually, the CUDA driver that I installed is 7.5; I noticed that the 8.0 was not working well on my system. I can certainly reinstall a previous version of Matlab, and see if I can combine. Would you happen to know how far I need to go back with the Matlab versions? Thanks! Barry

[Walter Roberson]

The combination OS-X 10.11.6, MATLAB R2017b, Cuda Driver version 8.0.90, GPU Driver version 10.10.14 310.42.25f02 works on my system. (The driver information is from the CUDA system preferences.)

[Walter Roberson]

Note: your MacBook Pro 2009 is not supported by MacOS Majove, which requires mid-2012 or newer. El Capitan is the OS-X release for your hardware; Sierra requires MacBook Pro mid 2010 or newer.

I am running R2018b on my El Capitan system; the only difficulties I have noticed are for GPU use.