Explanation of CUDA C and C++

Question

Can anyone give me a good explanation as to the nature of CUDA C and C++? As I understand it, CUDA is supposed to be C with NVIDIA\'s GPU libraries. As of right now CUDA C suppo

Answer 1

Sometimes you hear that CUDA would be C and C++, but I don't think it is, for the simple reason that this impossible. To cite from their programming guide:

For the host code, nvcc supports whatever part of the C++ ISO/IEC 14882:2003 specification the host c++ compiler supports.

For the device code, nvcc supports the features illustrated in Section D.1 with some restrictions described in Section D.2; it does not support run time type information (RTTI), exception handling, and the C++ Standard Library.

As I can see, it only refers to C++, and only supports C where this happens to be in the intersection of C and C++. So better think of it as C++ with extensions for the device part rather than C. That avoids you a lot of headaches if you are used to C.