The PAPI NVML component provides an interface to the nVidia Management Library (nvml, libnvidia-ml).

In versions 8 and later part of the CUDA Toolkit, The NVIDIA

Management Library is no longer a separate download is installed with

CUDA.  On Linux/x86 platforms, it is often found in

/usr/lib64/nvidia/libnvidia-ml.so

Other download packages may be available at 

https://developer.nvidia.com/gpu-deployment-kit

Before running the NVML component, the configure script for the NVML component 

must be executed in order to generate the Makefile which contains the 

configuration settings. This script needs to be executed only once. 

    % cd < papi_dir >/src/components/nvml

    % ./configure --with-nvml-libdir=<NVMLDIR>> --with-nvml-incdir=<NVMLDIR> --with-cuda-dir=<CUDADIR>

For example, one configuration may look like this

    %./configure --with-nvml-libdir=/usr/lib64/nvidia --with-nvml-incdir=/usr/local/cuda/include --with-cuda-dir=/usr/local/cuda

The NVML component is added to PAPI during the configuration of PAPI

by adding the '--with-components=nvml' command line option to

configure.    

   % ./configure --with-components="nvml"

At build-time the nVidia compiler, nvcc, needs to be in your path, as does the cuda run-time library (libcudart.so).

Please refer to http://developer.download.nvidia.com/assets/cuda/files/CUDADownloads/NVML/nvml.pdf 

for details about NVML library.

Note: Power Limiting using NVML (aka power capping) requires root.

PAPI has added support for power limiting using NVML (on supported

devices from the Kepler family or later).  The executable needs to

have root permissions to change the power limits on the device.

The power_management_limit can be written to set a limit (in

milliWatts) to the power consumption by DEVICE.  The value that can

be written needs to be between the

power_management_limit_constraint_min and

power_management_limit_constraint_max.

nvml:::DEVICE:power_management_limit

nvml:::DEVICE:power_management_limit_constraint_min

nvml:::DEVICE:power_management_limit_constraint_max

A test for writing of the power_management_limit can be found in the

nvml/tests.