Can I somehow run X11 on the Intel integrated graphics in my optimus laptop and debug CUDA code on the NVIDIA GPU?

Question

I know I can debug CUDA on linux using cuda-gdb without GUI, but that's not really convenient. I also know that one can debug CUDA with Nsight Eclipse edition if X server is running on other GPU. So I have dual GPU laptop (geforce 525m and Intel 3000) and I was wondering if I could run X server on Intel card while my CUDA code runs on my nvidia card?

Answer 1

If you want to try to make this work on your laptop, you should first ensure that your xorg.conf file references only the Intel integrated GPU.

Then you will need to try and determine if the laptop is powering up both the Intel integrated GPU and the NVIDIA discrete GPU when you are running under linux. For this test I would start by running lspci If that command shows both the intel graphics and the NVIDIA GPU, then you could try installing the CUDA toolkit at that point. Be sure to answer "no" when it asks if you want to update the xorg.conf file.

After that it may just work. If it doesn't work, you probably want to inspect your SBIOS machine configuration options to see if there is a way you can force-enable both the NVIDIA GPU and the Intel graphics.

If you are able to get the display hosted by the Intel graphics, and the CUDA toolkit loaded and functional, then you should have no problems debugging on that NVIDIA GPU.