2 docs tagged with "ptx"

Almost every optimization in this section works through the C++ source and trusts nvcc to generate good machine code from it. Occasionally that trust runs out — an instruction has no intrinsic, or the compiler's chosen code sequence needs to be inspected or overridden directly — and the only way forward is reading or writing below the C++ level. This page covers both: reading the SASS a kernel actually compiles to, and, rarely, writing PTX by hand to reach an instruction the compiler won't emit on its own.

A single .cu file contains two programs wearing one extension: host C++ that runs on the CPU, and device code that has to end up as instructions a specific GPU can execute. nvcc is the tool that splits those apart, compiles each with the right compiler, and glues the results back into one binary — understanding that split is what makes -arch, -code, and the difference between a build that runs everywhere and one that only runs on the GPU it was built for make sense.