How to specify Intel C++ compiler icl as host compiler of a CUDA project in Visual Studio

Question

In the project properties page of CUDA project in visual studio, there seems to be the option to custom the host compiler. But after I selected the intel C++ compiler, the -

Answer 1

I often find myself using Intel C++ together with CUDA for fluid simulations, and I may be able to help if you are still interested in an answer.

You have not specified which version of Visual Studio you are referring to, but I imply that you are talking about Visual Studio Professional/Enterprise or any of that line of fully featured IDEs.

While I haven't extensively used any of those, there is a way of using Intel C++ (and by extension, any compiler) with CUDA, in Visual Studio Code. If you decide to go this route, and since you mentioned Windows, here is the procedure:

To make things simple, download the C++ tutorial build from here. If you want to make the build yourself, instructions are found on MSDN here.

After the download, you should have a build.bat file in the project directory. Open the file to edit it.

Replace everything inside the build.bat file as follows:

@echo off

call "Path\to\compilervars.bat" intel64    
call "Path\to\vcvarsall.bat" x64
set compilerflags=/Zi /EHsc -I"%MKLROOT%"\include    
set linkerflags= mkl_intel_ilp64.lib mkl_intel_thread.lib mkl_core.lib libiomp5md.lib

icl.exe  /Foobj\helloworld /Fdobj\ -c  -I. -I"%CUDA_PATH%"\include %compilerflags% helloworld.cpp /link %linkerflags% 

"Path\to\nvcc.exe" -gencode=arch=compute_61,code=\"sm_61,compute_61\" -IPath\to\CUDA\include  -G -maxrregcount=0  --machine 64 --compile -cudart static -g  -DWIN64 -DNDEBUG -D_CONSOLE -Xcompiler "/EHsc /W3 /nologo /Od /FS /Fdobj\ /Zi /RTC1 /MD /MP" -o obj\hello2.obj "hello.cu"
icl.exe -o bin\hello.exe /Fdobj\ obj\hello2.obj obj\helloworld.obj "%CUDA_PATH%"\lib\x64\cudart.lib %compilerflags% /link %linkerflags%

In other words, we tell the build process to:

Look for the compilervars.bat file (found in Intel C++ compiler /bin folder) and set Intel specific macros and variables for the build process

Look for the vcvarsall.bat file (found in Visual C++ compiler /VC folder) and set Visual C++ specific macros and variables for the build process

Set the Compiler and Linker Flags for the Intel C++ compiler.

IMPORTANT: Call the Intel C++ compiler to generate an Obj file from all the non-CUDA (i.e. .cpp files of the project - In this case, helloworld.cpp) and also include the CUDA headers if you need them. Make sure no CUDA kernel calls (functions with <<< >>>) happen here.

THEN: Call the CUDA compiler to generate an Obj file from all the CUDA files (i.e. the .cu extensions - In this case, hello.cu), in this case, I call the Obj file hello2.obj (I explicitly renamed it to show you how to do that).

FINALLY Call the C++ Compiler to generate the executable file by mentioning both Obj files as well as the cudart library for static linking.

Note that CUDA still needs VC++ so we allow it to access VC++ for only the part where it compiles CUDA files (which is why we had to initialize vcvarsall.bat), and stick to Intel C++ for the rest.

Answer 2

It's still the case. The only supported environments are listed in the installation guide for windows. The intel compiler is not listed.

By comparison, the corresponding section of the linux installation guide shows that a certain version of the intel compiler (ICC) is supported for the host compiler.

In the future, you should be able to refer to the corresponding documents published with newer CUDA toolkits to determine compiler support.