Nsight Graphics 2020.3

NVIDIA® Nsight™ Graphics 2020.3 is released with the following changes:

Feature Enhancements:
  • VK_KHR_ray_tracing support (provisional extension)
    • Applications that use VK_KHR_ray_tracing can be captured, profiled and exported to a C++ Capture. While the extension is still evolving, the NVIDIA Beta Driver will allow for experimentation before the extension is ratified. Go here for more info: https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver
  • Added support for DirectX RayTracing Tier 1.1
    • TraceRays calls within ExecuteIndirect can be scrubbed in the timeline
    • All new DXR 1.1 ray tracing flags are supported for C++ capture and acceleration structure viewing
  • Added command-line interface (CLI) functionality
    • The CLI currently supports generating GPU Trace reports or C++ captures
    • Users can configure a wait in seconds or frames before capture is triggered
  • Added VRS visualization in the Current Target View
    • The shading rate can be visualized as an overlay in the current target view if it is enabled for a draw
    • Supports Vulkan and D3D12, with OpenGL support coming in future version
  • Introducing the new Nsight Graphics SDK: an all new way to interface with Nsight Graphics
    • There is now an API for programmatic injection that allows you to add the ability to enable your application to be debugged or profiled
    • This is our initial release and we have plans for additional capabilities in future versions
Improvements:
  • C++ capture build time for large applications was reduced by up to 40x
  • C++ capture replay performance was improved by up to 5%
  • Changed the names of the Nsight Graphics executables and artifact extensions to be consistent with Nsight Compute and Nsight Systems
  • Improved detection and freezing of watchdog threads to help avoid application teardown by any watchdog after resuming from a capture
Additional Changes:
  • Support added for these Vulkan Extensions
    • VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations
    • VK_KHR_pipeline_library
    • VK_EXT_tooling_info
  • Support added for these OpenGL Extensions:
    • GL_NV_clip_space_w_scaling
  • GPU Trace now supports NVTX
    • NVTX start-end ranges can be collected and shown in GPU Trace reports
  • External DXIL PDBs are now supported for shader viewing and editing
    • You can add search paths in the Nsight Graphics options to specify where these external PDBs can be found
  • Added support for displaying fixed-size strings in the memory viewer
  • Support for Maxwell architectures has been removed
Known Issues:
  • Vulkan applications using the validation layer might trigger a validation error in GPU Trace. This issue is caused by a bug in the validation layer (present in SDK 1.2.135.0) and will be fixed in a future release of the Vulkan SDK. Although this error is harmless to ignore, we recommend not using the validation layer while profiling using GPU Trace as it may alter the application's behavior and performance.

For more details and known issues, please see the full release notes!

For an overview of Nsight™ Graphics and access to resources, please visit the main Nsight™ Graphics page.

NVIDIA® Nsight™ Graphics 2020.3 is available for download under the NVIDIA Registered Developer Program.

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