Would cuDNN v6.0 work with TensorFlow currently?

Question

Do we specifically need cuDNN v5.1 (as suggested) for TensorFlow, or would the latest version (v6.0) work as well? Is there backward compatibility in cuDNN versions?

Answer 1

No, cuDNN 6.0 is not supported in the latest 1.2 version. But there is a hope: the official release notes tell the following:

TensorFlow 1.2 may be the last time we build with cuDNN 5.1. Starting with TensorFlow 1.3, we will try to build all our prebuilt binaries with cuDNN 6.0. While we will try to keep our source code compatible with cuDNN 5.1, it will be best effort.

So hopefully the next 1.3 version will use cuDNN 6.0. Especially now, when 7.0 is right around the corner.

Answer 2

Today ( 21 August 2017 ) I installed the latest Tensorflow release v1.3 and I can confirm that it REQUIRES cuDNN v6.0 and WILL NOT WORK with v5.1 . It will ask in fact for the library libcudnn.so.6 and not the libcudnn.so.5

P.s. If you want it to work with cuDNN 5.1. you can install a previous version e.g. v1.2 which is at this link:

https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.12/get_started/os_setup#virtualenv_installation