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I have already read this previous issue, but it did not answer my question. Different CUDA versions shown by nvcc and NVIDIA-smi

The above issue answers the question whether there is a problem with the installation. But it does not answer my question "If I install other applications in Python that require CUDA, which CUDA version should I assume that I have?".

In the previous issue, the author had intentionally installed two different versions of CUDA on his system. But I have only installed CUDA 10.1 on my computer, yet Python claims that I have installed version 11.1.

CUDA was installed on my computer following instructions on Nvidias homepage, by downloading installer files. I have not installed CUDA packages via pip or pip3 in python.

Version according to cmd. enter image description here

Version in the file system. enter image description here

Version according to System Environment Variables. enter image description here

Version according to nvidia-smi called from a python console. enter image description here

If I install other applications in Python, which CUDA version should I assume that I have? How can I get rid of the 11.1 version, and only keep the 10.1 version?

talonmies
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Alex
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    You don't have the 11.1 version. You need to read and understand the question and answer I pointed you to. The version shown by `nvidia-smi` is **not** the version you have installed, by your way of definition. You'll need to understand the difference between the **driver API version** and the **runtime API version**. The applications you install in python will depend on the **runtime API version** and you only have one of those, it is CUDA 10.1. – Robert Crovella Nov 20 '21 at 18:51

1 Answers1

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"If I install other applications in Python that require CUDA, which CUDA version should I assume that I have?"

You have CUDA 10.1. You will satisify the needs of any CUDA application in python such as tensorflow, if that application was linked against CUDA 10.1.

If I install other applications in Python, which CUDA version should I assume that I have?

You have CUDA 10.1

How can I get rid of the 11.1 version, and only keep the 10.1 version?

You can't, and don't want to. The CUDA 11.1 version reported is the version of the CUDA driver API. CUDA applications that are usable in Python will be linked either against a specific version of the runtime API, in which case you should assume your CUDA version is 10.1, or else they will be linked against the driver API. If linked against the driver API only, then based on your GPU driver install, any linkage against any driver API version up through CUDA 11.1 will work. That would include any driver API applications linked against CUDA 10.1.

If you were to uninstall the driver that is reporting the 11.1 version, you would break your CUDA install and nothing would work. The driver reporting 11.1 is perfectly fine and no problem at all for usage of CUDA applications that expect CUDA 10.1.

Robert Crovella
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