Cuda Applications on Wine - suggesting to merge wine-staging/patches/nvcuda-CUDA_Support patches into upstream wine.

[Alois Schlögl]

I'd like suggesting to merge the 17 patches from 
wine-staging/patches/nvcuda-CUDA_Support patches into upstream wine for 
the following reasons:

Currently Cuda applications for Windows do not run in native Wine. Such 
an application is Warpem (available for Windows only), and CUDA-Z for 
Windows.
I assume there are other applications as well. This could be fixed by 
pulling in the 17 patches wine-staging/patches/nvcuda-CUDA_Support.

Possible disadvantages:
- build dependency to cuda - some distros might not want to have a build 
dependency on cuda.h
   That's the choice of the package manager, but this should be endorsed 
and recommended for the above reason.

- run-time dependency on cuda
      wine does not have a runtime dependency on cuda (probably due to 
dynamic linking)
      e.g. cuda-z can be started under wine, and stops gracefully with a 
message the cuda is not available.

- number of APIs to maintain
      is currently done anyway (by the wine-staging team)

From a the perspective of some application, Cuda is part of the 
operating system should be provided by the platform (Wine in our case).
Overall, it seems merging the nvcuda-CUDA_Support into upstream Wine are 
the right thing to do.

Best regards,
    Alois

[Alex Henrie]

On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 9:13 AM Alois Schlögl  wrote:
> I'd like suggesting to merge the 17 patches from
> wine-staging/patches/nvcuda-CUDA_Support patches into upstream wine

In my opinion, CUDA for Wine would make the most sense as some kind of
downloadable add-on (maybe something akin to Wine Mono). But I never
use CUDA, so it would be up to someone else to make that happen.

-Alex

[Alois Schlögl]

Am 11/16/22 um 02:21 schrieb Alex Henrie:
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 9:13 AM Alois Schlögl  wrote:
> > I'd like suggesting to merge the 17 patches from
> > wine-staging/patches/nvcuda-CUDA_Support patches into upstream wine
>
> In my opinion, CUDA for Wine would make the most sense as some kind of
> downloadable add-on (maybe something akin to Wine Mono). But I never
> use CUDA, so it would be up to someone else to make that happen.
>
> -Alex

[1] seems to suggest that this is not possible because cuda is a 
"low-level library", and because of that
"...You cant install some windows driver in wine and expect this to 
work. ...".

Therefore, adding the nvcuda patches in upstream wine seems to be the 
proper approach.

- Alois

[1] https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52528#c4

[Aaryaman Vasishta]

For the runtime dependency, could we also support HIP ? We have a large
audience of steam deck users who might want to tinker around with HIP
applications. I'd like to share a library my team has been working on
called Orochi https://github.com/GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/Orochi
It handles runtime linking of both nvcuda.dll and amdhip64.dll dynamically.
This could be used as part of a wine add-on.

Cheers,
Aaryaman

On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 4:39 PM Alois Schlögl 
wrote:
> Am 11/16/22 um 02:21 schrieb Alex Henrie:
> > On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 9:13 AM Alois Schlögl
>
> wrote:
> > > I'd like suggesting to merge the 17 patches from
> > > wine-staging/patches/nvcuda-CUDA_Support patches into upstream wine
> >
> > In my opinion, CUDA for Wine would make the most sense as some kind of
> > downloadable add-on (maybe something akin to Wine Mono). But I never
> > use CUDA, so it would be up to someone else to make that happen.
> >
> > -Alex
>
> [1] seems to suggest that this is not possible because cuda is a
> "low-level library", and because of that
> "...You cant install some windows driver in wine and expect this to
> work. ...".
>
> Therefore, adding the nvcuda patches in upstream wine seems to be the
> proper approach.
> - Alois
>
> [1] https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52528#c4

[Sveinar Søpler]

I tend to agree that since CUDA needs the linux version of libcuda that 
only come with the nvidia driver, i am a bit unsure if it would be a 
"default wine" thing. A regular windows user do not install (nv)CUDA.dll 
libraries unless they use an NVIDIA adapter afaik.

I have been working on improving CUDA support for wine here: 
https://github.com/SveSop/nvcuda/tree/devel , but i am unable to crack 
compatibility with CUDA SDK 11.6 and newer i am afraid.

Sveinar

On 16.11.2022 08:38, Alois Schlögl wrote:
> Am 11/16/22 um 02:21 schrieb Alex Henrie:
> > On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 9:13 AM Alois Schlögl 
> >  wrote:
> > > I'd like suggesting to merge the 17 patches from
> > > wine-staging/patches/nvcuda-CUDA_Support patches into upstream wine
> >
> > In my opinion, CUDA for Wine would make the most sense as some kind of
> > downloadable add-on (maybe something akin to Wine Mono). But I never
> > use CUDA, so it would be up to someone else to make that happen.
> >
> > -Alex
>
> [1] seems to suggest that this is not possible because cuda is a 
> "low-level library", and because of that
> "...You cant install some windows driver in wine and expect this to 
> work. ...".
>
> Therefore, adding the nvcuda patches in upstream wine seems to be the 
> proper approach.
> - Alois
>
> [1] https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52528#c4

[Stefan Dösinger]

> Am 16.11.2022 um 17:40 schrieb Sveinar Søpler :
>
> I tend to agree that since CUDA needs the linux version of libcuda that only come with the nvidia driver, i am a bit unsure if it would be a "default wine" thing. A regular windows user do not install (nv)CUDA.dll libraries unless they use an NVIDIA adapter afaik.
>
> I have been working on improving CUDA support for wine here: https://github.com/SveSop/nvcuda/tree/devel , but i am unable to crack compatibility with CUDA SDK 11.6 and newer i am afraid.

Afaiu a challenge with this is interop with graphics APIs. I am writing this from half-knowledge here, but I think CUDA has ways to transfer data to and from OpenGL, d3d and Vulkan. Getting those to work will need deep rooted hooks in winex11.drv and wined3d, for a vendor specific library.

One important thing is that a Wine built on a machine with Cuda headers and libs needs to run on a machine without Cuda installed (minus Cuda functions, obviously).

[Erich E. Hoover]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 7:41 AM Sveinar Søpler  wrote:
> I tend to agree that since CUDA needs the linux version of libcuda that
> only come with the nvidia driver, i am a bit unsure if it would be a
> "default wine" thing. A regular windows user do not install (nv)CUDA.dll
> libraries unless they use an NVIDIA adapter afaik.
> ...

We would either need:
1) to have it runtime detect the library (since distro builds could
have the library where an end-user would not) or
2) we would need to build both the Unix and Windows library together
and distribute them as an addon*
> I have been working on improving CUDA support for wine here:
> https://github.com/SveSop/nvcuda/tree/devel , but i am unable to crack
> compatibility with CUDA SDK 11.6 and newer i am afraid.

Best,
Erich

* I do not believe that our current addons (wine-gecko/wine-mono) have
a way to distribute files on the Unix side of the line, but I haven't
looked at this in a while

[Esme Povirk (any/all)]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 10:46 AM Erich E. Hoover 
wrote:
> - I do not believe that our current addons (wine-gecko/wine-mono) have
>
> a way to distribute files on the Unix side of the line, but I haven't
> looked at this in a while

This is correct, they only contain PE/Windows binaries. Distributing unix
code in this way would be more complicated because it needs to be available
for all platforms Wine supports, not just Linux.

I don't think that addons are a good fit for wrapping native libraries.

--
https://my.pronouns.page/are/any

[Erich E. Hoover]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 11:55 AM Esme Povirk (any/all)
 wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 10:46 AM Erich E. Hoover  wrote:
> > - I do not believe that our current addons (wine-gecko/wine-mono) have
> >
> > a way to distribute files on the Unix side of the line, but I haven't
> > looked at this in a while
>
> This is correct, they only contain PE/Windows binaries. Distributing unix code in this way would be more complicated because it needs to be available for all platforms Wine supports, not just Linux.

If you were to take this route it would require building for all these
platforms and storing them with the information that allows you to
download the correct one ( like Python does with "wheels" /
https://stackoverflow.com/a/41645556/185828 ).
> I don't think that addons are a good fit for wrapping native libraries.

Yeah, I'm not really a fan either - the "autodetect the library at
runtime" approach is much easier.

Best,
Erich