Is there a way to run RAPIDS on windows pc?

Question

I am trying to run Nvidia rapids on a windows computer but haven't had any luck. I have installed docker desktop for windows and downloaded the rapids image. Cuda 10.0 is installed, and Nvidia-container-toolkit isn't. I haven't been able to make it run. Any thoughts or guidance?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if anyone has given a more definite 'updated' answer to the original question. At this point (August 2020) the answer is "Yes!". You definitely can run RAPIDS in WSL2 on Windows 10 subject to a few conditions:

Requirements

• You must use RAPIDS in the Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2 (WSL2);

• Windows 10 Version 2004 (OS Build 202001.1000 or later) You have to sign up to get Windows Insider Preview versions, specifically the Developer Channel. This is required for the WSL2 VM to have GPU access. https://insider.windows.com/en-us/

• CUDA version 455.41 in CUDA SDK v11.1 You must be using a special version of the NVIDA CUDA drivers (I'm using ) that you must get by a special download from NVIDIA's site. You must join the NVIDIA Developer Program to get access to the version -- then search for 'WSL2 CUDA Driver' and it should lead you to it.

Setup

1. Install the developer preview version of windows. Make sure to click the check box in 'update' that installs other recommended updates too.
2. Install the windows CUDA driver from the NVIDIA Developer Program
3. Enable WSL 2 by enabling the "Virtual Machine Platform" optional feature. You can find more steps here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
4. Install WSL from the Windows Store (Ubuntu-20.04 confirmed working)
5. Install python on the WSL VM, tested with Anaconda
6. Install Rapids AI (It's best to install this right now before you have hundreds of other packages for 'conda' to try to self-consistently reconcile with the rapids dependency graphs -- you can always install additional python packages via pip or conda later.)

After doing this, if you launch ipython...

Python 3.8.3 (default, May 19 2020, 18:47:26)
Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information
IPython 7.17.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.

>>> import cuml
>>> cuml.__version__
'0.15.0'

>>> import cudf
>>> cudf.__version__
'0.15.0'

>>> import dask_cudf
>>> dask_cudf.__version__
'0.15.0'

>>> import cupy
>>> cupy.__version__
'7.8.0'

...and you're good to go with RAPIDS AI.

Answer 2

Update 9/6/20: The answer written by Wesley is accurate with the latest Windows Insider Preview with WSL2. Rather than revising this answer, I've just made the edits to his. https://stackoverflow.com/a/59364773/6779504

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No. As it exists now, RAPIDS requires a Linux host. This came up in a recent workshop by NVIDIA. It was also mentioned that RAPIDS won't work with WSL. It may work with WSL version 2, but I haven't tried it nor am aware of someone that as.

The only option would if you could assign a GPU to a Linux VM on the Windows host. This possible but sufficiently complex that dual-booting is a better solution.