Where is the CUDA SDK for version 6?

Abstract:

Can anyone please tell me if there is an SDK package separate from the toolkit for CUDA 6? If so, from where can it be downloaded. If not, if it is now part of the toolkit, where is it in there?

Longer version with rant:

Most of the documentation that I see on the web refers to the CUDA toolkit and the CUDA SDK as two different entities that that must be downloaded and installed separately. But I cannot find any hint whatsoever of an SDK for CUDA 6. I assume that the SDK has been absorbed into the toolkit. But it does not say that anywhere! It would be so nice to those of us that have to figure all this out if there was some documentation on the directory structure of the complete CUDA toolkit and SDK since building anything that uses them requires such knowledge. I cannot find that either. I have been building a program that uses CUDA on both Windows 7 x64 and on Ubuntu 12.04.4. It has been frustrating – absolutely maddening – how much time it has taken me just to figure out where the installation puts everything. In windows 64 its all spread out over at least two dirs in Program Files two more in Program Files (86) and one or more in my user-specific settings dirs. There is no explanation of this that I can find anywhere. I had to figure it out by a long tedious trial and error. Now I’ve got to do the same search for Ubuntu. The program won’t build this time, because it does not know where CUDA_SDK_ROOT_DIR is. Is it in /usr/local/cuda-6.0? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Is it in /home//NVIDIA_CUDA-6.0_Samples? The acronym SDK appears nowhere among the file names and folder names in the CUDA 6 toolkit.

OK enough ranting. Any good answer to my questions will be much appreciated.

Prior to cuda 5 there was a cuda “toolkit” which contained things like compilers and tools and libraries, and there was an “SDK” that could be installed separately that mostly contained sample codes. Starting with CUDA 5, these are combined into a single “toolkit” installer and the tookit installer (on linux, a “runfile”, on windows, an exe file) will now install 3 major components:

  • GPU driver
  • CUDA toolkit
  • CUDA “samples”

There is no longer a separate installer for the “SDK” and it is now called the CUDA “Samples”.

Thank you, txbob, for that explanation. Wouldn’t it be nice if your explanation were included on the download pages for CUDA 5, 6, and later versions?

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