Link to cutil in GPU Computing SDK

Question

I've been trying to link to the functions in the cutil.h ofthe GPU Computing SDK released by NVIDIA.

At the moment, I am simply trying to compile this simple piece of code:

#include <iostream>
#include <cuda.h>
#include <cutil.h>

using namespace std;

int main(){
    unsigned int time_total;    
    cutCreateTimer(&time_total);
    return 0;
}

using the following command:

nvcc -I/home/sj755/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C/common/inc/ -L/home/sj755/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C/lib/libcutil_x86_64.a cutiltest.cu

Only to get the following error:

/tmp/tmpxft_000077cc_00000000-13_cutiltest.o: In function `main':
tmpxft_000077cc_00000000-1_cutiltest.cudafe1.cpp:(.text+0x10): undefined reference to 

`cutCreateTimer'

collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

ld also can't find -lcutil if I were to add the flag. There is a static library that I'm supposed to link to, but for some reason this never works out. Here's what I tried:

I've changed my .bashrc file so that LD_LIBRARY_PATH includes the path to the static library
##########< CULA >
export CULA_ROOT=/usr/local/cula

export CULA_INC_PATH=$CULA_ROOT/include

export CULA_BIN_PATH_32=$CULA_ROOT/bin

export CULA_BIN_PATH_64=$CULA_ROOT/bin64

export CULA_LIB_PATH_32=$CULA_ROOT/lib

export CULA_LIB_PATH_64=$CULA_ROOT/lib64
##########< CUDA >
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/cuda/bin

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=:/usr/local/cuda/lib64

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$CULA_LIB_PATH_64

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/cuda/libnvvp/

export CUDA_SDK_ROOT_DIR=/home/sj755/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$CUDA_SDK_ROOT_DIR/lib
I've also tried renaming libcutil_x86_64.a to libcutil.a, still nothing.
Tried extracting the archive, creating a shared object file, and linking to it:

ar -x libcutil_x86_64.a

gcc -I /usr/include/GL/ -L /usr/include/GL/ -lglut -lGL -lGLU -lX11 -lXmu -lXi -lm -lpthread -shared *.cpp.o -o libcutil.so

nvcc -lcutil -I /home/sj755/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C/common/inc/ -L /home/sj755/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C/lib/libcutil.so cutiltest.cu

Only to get the following /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lcutil

What step am I forgetting here?

talonmies talonmies · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-25T06:04:11

Your compilation statement is incorrect. It should look something like this:

nvcc -I$SDKROOT/C/common/inc -L$SDKROOT/C/lib cutiltest.cc -lcutil_x86_64

where SDKROOT holds the root path to the SDK, which looks to be

/home/sj755/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK

in your case. The key things to note here are that the library must be passed by name as a -l option after the code and objects that require it. A concrete example on OS X using your code snippet:

$ cat cutiltest.cc 

#include <iostream>
#include <cuda.h>
#include <cutil.h>

using namespace std;

int main(){
    unsigned int time_total;    
    cutCreateTimer(&time_total);
    return 0;
}


$ nvcc -I/Developer/GPU\ Computing/C/common/inc -L /Developer/GPU\ Computing/C/lib -o cutiltest cutiltest.cc -lcutil_i386


$ ls -l cutiltest
-rwxr-xr-x  1 talonmies  talonmies  117548 May 25 07:57 cutiltest

But as a last remark, you really should rethink your choice of using the SDK cutils library at all. It is only intended for use with the SDK examples. It isn't part of CUDA, it has no documentation, it isn't guaranteed to work or not contain bugs, and isn't guaranteed to be consistent (or even present) from one SDK release to another.

Link to cutil in GPU Computing SDK

2 Answers