cudaMemcpy invalid argument

Question

My program runs 2 threads - Thread A (for input) and B (for processing). I also have a pair of pointers to 2 buffers, so that when Thread A has finished copying data into Buffer 1, Thread B starts processing Buffer 1 and Thread A starts copying data into Buffer 2. Then when Buffer 2 is full, Thread A copies data into Buffer 1 and Thread B processes Buffer 2, and so on.

My problem comes when I try to cudaMemcpy Buffer[] into d_Buffer (which was previously cudaMalloc'd by the main thread, i.e. before thread creation. Buffer[] were also malloc'd by the main thread). I get a "invalid argument" error, but have no idea which is the invalid argument.

I've reduced my program to a single-threaded program, but still using 2 buffers. That is, the copying and processing takes place one after another, instead of simultaneously. The cudaMemcpy line is exactly the same as the double-threaded one. The single-threaded program works fine.

I'm not sure where the error lies.

Thank you.

Regards, Rayne

Answer 1

If you are doing this with CUDA 3.2 or earlier, the reason is that GPU contexts are tied to a specific thread. If a multi-threaded program allocated memory on the same GPU from different host threads, the allocations wind up establishing different contexts, and pointers from one context are not portable to another context. Each context has its own "virtualised" memory space to work with.

The solution is to either use the context migration API to transfer a single context from thread to thread as they do work, or try the new public CUDA 4.0rc2 release, which should support what you are trying to do without the use of context migration. The downside is that 4.0rc2 is a testing release, and it requires a particular beta release driver. That driver won't work will all hardware (laptops for example).