From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 22 2015 - 08:58:05 CST

Alexandre,
  Another diagnostic that is useful if VMD isn't seeing the GPU as
usable by CUDA or OptiX is to run the nvidia-smi utility and
compare its output to what VMD says. What does nvidia-smi say
on your system?

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 08:00:34AM -0600, Josh Vermaas wrote:
> Hi Alexandre,
>
> What information does VMD spit back at you at startup? This is (part of)
> what the terminal spits back at me:
> Info) VMD for LINUXAMD64, version 1.9.2 (December 31, 2014)
> Info) [1]http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
> Info) Email questions and bug reports to [2]vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> Info) Please include this reference in published work using VMD:
> Info) Humphrey, W., Dalke, A. and Schulten, K., `VMD - Visual
> Info) Molecular Dynamics', J. Molec. Graphics 1996, 14.1, 33-38.
> Info) -------------------------------------------------------------
> Info) Multithreading available, 24 CPUs detected.
> Info) Free system memory: 28243MB (70%)
> Info) Creating CUDA device pool and initializing hardware...
> Info) Detected 1 available CUDA accelerator:
> Info) [0] GeForce GTX 980 16 SM_5.2 @ 1.22 GHz, 4.0GB RAM, KTO, AE2,
> ZCP
> Info) Detected 1 available TachyonL/OptiX ray tracing accelerator
>
> Those last 4 lines are the important part. VMD needs to detect the
> available cuda devices. If you don't see lines similar to those,
> TachyonL/OptiX ray tracers won't be available. There are many potential
> reasons why. The first thing I'd check on ubuntu is that you've installed
> the appropriate libcuda package to go along with your driver (eg.
> libcuda1-331 with nvidia-331). The second would be if your graphics card
> is supported by the driver. For instance for the 980, the minimum driver
> version needed for all of the functionality is the 343 driver, which isn't
> in the default Ubuntu repositories, and I needed to install it straight
> from NVIDIA's website. What specifically is the output VMD gives you at
> startup?
>
> -Josh Vermaas
>
> On 01/22/2015 04:56 AM, Alexandre Suman de Araujo wrote:
>
> Hi all.
>
> I have an Nvidia card with CUDA support and installed the latest nvidia
> drivers in a linux ubuntu 14.04 machine.
>
> I downloaded the new 1.9.2 version of vmd (LINUX_64 OpenGL, CUDA,
> TachyonL-OptiX binary) and installed following the standard
> instructions.
>
> When I open the "Render" windows TachyonL-OptiX is not in renderer list.
>
> Can anyone help me?
>
> Cheers
>
> Alexandre
>
> References
>
> Visible links
> 1. http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
> 2. mailto:vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

-- 
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http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/