MATLAB Parallel Computing Toolbox + (2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690's in SLI

I have a question that's related to a previous question: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/41520

It was asked before if MATLAB can see Nvidia's GeForce GTX 690 card as a single GPU card, and the response was no since that card has two GPU cards coupled in a single device. However can you have (2) GTX 690's in SLI and have MATLAB see it as a single GPU card (2 per 690's) coupled with the other in SLI, therefore seeing it as one GTX 690? This would be beneficial for those with large arrays over 2GB in size.

I understand Nvidia markets the Tesla cards specifically for GPU computing, but I'd just like to know if the above is at all possible.

Thanks,

Yannick

Answer 1

[James Lebak]

As far as I can tell, this is not possible, because SLI and CUDA don't interact. The CUDA C Programming Guide makes little mention of SLI, but where it does, it says that "…applications have to create multiple CUDA contexts, one for each GPU in the SLI configuration…." (section 3.2.11.3).

My impression is therefore that while SLI can make the cards appear as one device for the purposes of graphics, it does not allow MATLAB to treat them as one device for the purposes of CUDA computing.

[Yannick]

Thanks, makes our purchasing decision easier.