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.