How to activate nVidia cards programmatically on new MacBookPros for CUDA programming?
- by Carsten Kuckuk
The new MacBookPros come with two graphic adapters, the Intel HD Graphics, and the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M. OS X switches back and forth between them, depending on the workload, detection of an external monitor, or activation of Rosetta.
I want to get my feet wet with CUDA programming, and unfortunately the CUDA SDK doesn't seem to take care of this back-and-forth switching. When Intel is active, no CUDA device gets detected, and when the NVidia card is active, it gets detected. So my current work-around is to use the little tool gfxCardStatus (http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/) to force the card on or off, just as I need it, but that's not satisfactory.
Does anybody here know what the Apple-blessed, Apple-recommended way is to (1) detect the presence of a CUDA card, (2) to activate this card when present?