Nvidia deprecates CUDA support for aging architectures
- Reference: 1738007108
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/01/27/nvidia_deprecates_cuda_support/
- Source link:
"Architecture support for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta is considered feature-complete and will be frozen in an upcoming release," the chipmaker said in its CUDA 12.8 [1]release notes .
The decision is likely to impact datacenter operators and scientific institutions still relying on the older models. The youngest of these architectures is almost eight years old, while the eldest will celebrate its 11th birthday this year. They grow up so fast.
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The good news for anyone still rocking one of these aging cards, which include Nvidia's later 700, 900, and 1000-series desktop chips as well as its M, P, and V-series datacenter parts, is that they won't stop working for a good while longer.
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According to Nvidia, features deprecated in the latest release will still work, at least for the moment. However, documentation could be removed, and they may become "officially unsupported," in future releases.
As we understand it, eventually users will find themselves stuck running older unsupported software and may run into compatibility issues with future operating system releases.
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The changes will primarily impact those using CUDA to run compute-heavy workloads on GPUs. Graphics drivers for Nvidia's Maxwell generation of cards still appear to be available and actively supported. Having said that, the clock is ticking for Maxwell. Nvidia ended support for its predecessor, Kepler, back in 2021. So, it may not be much longer before Maxwell joins its sibling in the legacy bin.
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[9]Nvidia shovels $500M into Israeli boffinry supercomputer
Of course, just because the hardware may not be supported going forward doesn't mean users will give them up before the magic smoke escapes. Last we heard, the Texas Advanced Computing Center's Stallion [10]tiled display system is still running on a bunch of 13-year-old Quadro K5000s.
There are still plenty of folks running Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta hardware. Livermore National Laboratory's Sierra supercomputer, powered by IBM's Power9 CPUs and Nvidia's V100 accelerators, is still chugging along. Meanwhile, its nearly identical sibling, Summit was only decommissioned last fall.
Nvidia's V100-series parts were also famously used by OpenAI to train GPT 3.5, which powered its ChatGPT and kicked off the AI boom.
In addition to deprecating hardware, CUDA 12.8 also drops support for a number of older operating systems including Windows 10 21H2, Debian 11, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15 SP4 and OpenSUSE 15.4.
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The Register reached out to Nvidia for comment; we'll let you know if we hear anything back. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-toolkit-release-notes/index.html
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Z5gQDP9jyF4FcyWCI7W07QAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/27/deepseek_suspends_new_registrations_amid/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/22/google_deepmind_ai_drugs/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/20/microsoft_nvidia_ai_pcs/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/16/nvidia_israel_blackwell/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/24/46k_display_tacc/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z5gQDP9jyF4FcyWCI7W07QAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
"In London, April’s a spring month."
Are you my contact from el'reg ?
Trust no one. Suspect everyone. The enemy is within ... You have been warned !!!
In a somewhat related vein:
It 'falls' to my attention that 'Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn' is a more familar set of seasons, for the rest of the world !!!
I realise that 'el Reg' has gone 'merican' but a little nod to the rest of the world would be welcome.
[Although in these Trumpf 2.0 times, I realise that the rest of the world is of less & less concern to the US of A.]
:)
Well, better begin saving for a massive upgrade
A few months ago, I got a Hand Me Down GTX1070 8GB used in mining (I know the miner). Coincidentaly, today I received new fans for it. Thanks to Intel XeSS (and, to a lesser exent, AMD's FSR), games are playable AND look great on my 1440p monitor (both XeSS and FSR do a MUCH better work upscaling than the built-in upscaler of the monitor anyway). And, if needed be, FSR 3.1 FrameGen + XeSS 1,3 Upscaling will be a Killer combo to go beyond 75FPS (that's what I got in 1994, plaing OG Doom on a Starion 700i P90 with a NEC XV17 monitor, 60Hz flickered in sync with fluorecents, giving me migraines)
But, it will be sad to see active Driver support go. For instance, some update fixed FSR/XeSS use in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (had to use NIS before). Anywho, in 9 days time, I have an appointment with some "Alex Murphy" guy.
I plan on keeping using it until I replace my 6 core MacMini 2018**, and even beyond that date, with whatever laptop I buy.
Having said that, when replacement time comes, I'll probably get an intel Celestial/Cleric, or a Druid card, with a balanced system around it as my desktop (yes, that's how long I think I can strech this desktop and 1070 without sacrificyng security).
Worse still, My DS1515+ goes out of support soon to. I may extend it's life for a while, but it will be a COSTLY upgrade cycle... (though a VM with spenology or some FOSS NAS system on the same desktop may do the trick)
**Bootcamping for games
Chinese deprecate Nvidia support for aging US LLMs.