Link-time optimizations in CUDA 11 - what are they and how to use them?

Question

The CUDA 11 features announcement, it's said that there are now:

New link time optimization capabilities

what link-time optimizations does nvcc actually employ (e.g. relative to the LTO capabilities in host-side code with g++ or clang++)?

Also - is there something one needs to do to get LTO enabled, or does it always occur (unlike with host-side code where you need to compile with an -flto switch?

Answer 1

Partial answer:

To enable link-time optimization, use --dlink-time-opt (or dlto) when invoking the NVCC compiler, both for compilation and for device-side code linking. No (link-time) optimization will be applied if the compiler can't find the relevant intermediate information.