I've got a Nvidia GPU, how can i code on it?

I've never really been into GPUs, not being a gamer b开发者_开发问答ut im aware of their parallel ability and wondered how could i get started programming on one? I recall (somewhere) there is a CUDA C-style programming language. What IDE do I use and is it relatively simple to execute code?

There are quick-start guides for getting the dev drivers and libraries set up on different platforms (win/mac/lin) here, there is also a link to the Cuda C programming guide.

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nsight.html

Although all the CUDA stuff we do (fluid sims / particle sims etc) are done on Linux, essentially with emacs and and gcc.

Some suggestions:

(1) Download the CUDA SDK from Nvidia (http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/sdk/website/samples.html). They have extensive set of application examples that have been previous developed, tested and commented. Some useful examples to startwith are matrixMul, histogram, convolutionSeparable. For more complex well documented code see the examples "nbody".

(2) If you are very good in C++ programmming, then using C++ Thrust libraries for GPU is another best place to start. It has extensive STL like support for doing operations on GPU. And the overall programming effort is much less for standard algorithms.

(3) Eclipse with CUDA plugin is a good IDE to work initially.

On windows visual studio. On linux eclipse, code::blocks and others depending on which you feel more comfortable. IDE though is the last thing. There are steps preceding this (installing appropriate display driver, toolkit, run sdk samples). The manuals/ links provided above are really helpful. Also there is nvidia forum for cuda development an many getting started guides