gocudrv

README

gocudrv

Pure-Go bindings for the NVIDIA CUDA Driver API. No cgo. The driver library is loaded dynamically at runtime.

Status: very early. The current API covers initialization, device discovery, primary contexts, memory, module loading, kernel launch, explicit streams, events, and async pinned copies.

What it is

A thin Go wrapper around libcuda.so.1 / nvcuda.dll so a Go program can:

• init CUDA
• enumerate devices
• create primary contexts
• allocate device memory
• copy memory
• load precompiled PTX
• launch kernels
• create and synchronize streams
• record/query events and wait across streams
• enqueue async pinned-memory copies

All without cgo, a C compiler, or the CUDA toolkit being installed at build time.

How it works

At runtime, gocudrv opens the CUDA driver library (libcuda.so.1 on Linux / WSL2, nvcuda.dll on Windows), binds the driver API symbols with pure Go, and wraps the raw CUDA result codes as Go errors. The public cuda package keeps raw handles behind Go types such as Device.

Requirements

• NVIDIA GPU with a working driver
• Linux, WSL2, or Windows
• Go 1.22+
• precompiled PTX if you want to launch kernels

CUDA headers and the CUDA toolkit are not required to build this package.

WSL2 quickstart

Install the NVIDIA driver on Windows. Do not install a Linux NVIDIA kernel driver inside WSL. CUDA is exposed to WSL through /usr/lib/wsl/lib/libcuda.so.1.

Sanity check:

nvidia-smi
ls -l /usr/lib/wsl/lib/libcuda.so*
go version

Build

CGO_ENABLED=0 go build ./...
CGO_ENABLED=0 go test ./...

Try it

go run ./examples/vector-add

Adds two float32 vectors on the GPU using an embedded PTX module and verifies the result on the CPU. See docs/kernels.md for the full workflow from .cu source to a running Go program.

For streams, events, and async pinned copies:

go run ./examples/event-pipeline

This runs two vector-add batches through a small event-ordered pipeline and prints GPU elapsed time from CUDA events.

Docs

• Getting started
• Writing and shipping kernels
• Public API
• Internals
• Docs index

Layout

cudasys/       raw dynamic symbols, close to C ABI
cudaresult/    thin wrappers returning Go errors
cuda/          public Go API
internal/      dynamic loader, executor, arg packing, platform paths
examples/      runnable demos
scripts/       build and check helpers

Roadmap

1. dynamic driver loader and cuInit
2. device enumeration
3. context with pinned executor goroutine
4. device memory and host/device copies
5. PTX module loading
6. kernel launch with arg packing
7. streams
8. async host/device copies
9. events and stream waits
10. basic benchmarking

License

See LICENSE.