Download NVIDIA Nsight Systems
Supported Platforms
Nsight Systems is distributed through multiple packages. Pick a “Profiling Target” column and learn what hosts may be used to profile (local or remote) as well as view reports. The links will bring you to a section to learn more about the appropriate set of packages, documentation, and download. Proceed as well to “System Requirements” to learn more about platform compatibility.
| Profiling Target | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux Workstations & Servers | Windows Workstations & Gaming PCs | Jetson & IGX | DRIVE | ||
| From Host | |||||
| Windows | Remote GUI* Report Viewer** | Local CLI & GUI Remote GUI* Report Viewer** | N/A | N/A | |
| Mac | Remote GUI* Report Viewer** | Remote GUI* Report Viewer** | N/A | N/A | |
| Linux | Local CLI & GUI Remote GUI* Report Viewer** | Remote GUI* Report Viewer** | Remote GUI Report Viewer*** | Remote GUI Report Viewer*** | |
| Jetson | N/A | N/A | Local CLI & GUI Report Viewer*** | N/A | |
| DRIVE | N/A | N/A | N/A | Local CLI | |
| Links | Learn More & Download | Learn More & Download | Learn More & Download | Learn More & Download | |
* For x86-64 targets only or opening report collected from a CLI
** Only for reports collected from Windows or Linux PCs & servers of equal or lesser versions
*** Only for reports collected from Jetson or DRIVEOS of equal or lesser versions
System Requirements
Nsight Systems is compatible on Windows workstations and PCs, Linux workstations and servers, as well as Jetson and NVIDIA DRIVE Autonomous Machines. Learn about the system requirements and support for your development platform below.
| Operating Systems | Windows 10 or newer | Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04* CentOS 7+* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7+* | Jetson Linux DRIVE OS |
| Target Hardware | GPU: Pascal or newer CPU: x86-64 processors | GPU: Pascal or newer CPU: x86-64 processors**, ARM, PowerPC | Jetson AGX Xavier, Jetson TX2, Jetson TX1, DRIVE AGX Pegasus, DRIVE AGX Xavier, DRIVE PX Parker AutoChauffeur, DRIVE PX Parker AutoCruise |
| Target Software | 64-bit applications only CUDA 10.0+ for CUDA trace Driver 418 or newer | 64-bit applications only CUDA 10.0+ for CUDA trace Driver 418 or newer | |
| Local Profiling | CLI & GUI | CLI & GUI | CLI (all platforms), GUI (Jetson Linux only) |
| Remote Profiling From Platforms | Windows 10+ macOS 10.15.7+* Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04 | Windows 10+ macOS 10.15.7+* Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04 | Ubuntu 20.04 |
| Link | Learn More & Download | Learn More & Download | Jetson DRIVE |
* For older OS versions, please use Nsight Systems 2020.3
** Intel Haswell architecture or newer is required for LBR sampling backtrace
Windows & Linux Servers, Workstations, and Gaming PCs: Download Nsight Systems 2023.1
These packages and documents are for local and remote profiling of Windows & Linux Servers, Workstations, and Gaming PCs. Profiling is supported on the following target architectures: x86-64 & arm-SBSA. See “Supported Platforms” for specifics about combinations of local, remote, and mixed-OS compatibilities.
NOTE1: Apple macOS is only supported as a remote profiling host only for these devices, and report viewer.
NOTE2: NVIDIA Tegra-based devices such as Jetson, DRIVE & IGX are only supported through the variants of Nsight Systems provided through their respective SDK. See “Supported Platforms” for more details. These packages are not guaranteed to be a compatible viewer for reports generated on those platforms.
Jetson & IGX Devices: Download Nsight Systems 2022.3
Nsight Systems is bundled as part of the Jetson development suite in the JetPack SDK.
What’s New:
Nsight Systems 2022.3 is available to download for the Jetson platform. 2022.3 introduces support for the Vulkan video extension and graphics pipeline library extension, as well as improved Linux performance counters.
Learn more.
DRIVE Devices: Download Nsight Systems 2022.3
Nsight Systems is bundled as part of DRIVE OS for development and deployment on DRIVE AGX-based autonomous vehicles.
What’s New:
Nsight Systems 2022.3 is available to download for the DRIVE platform. 2022.3 introduces support for the Vulkan video extension and graphics pipeline library extension, as well as improved Linux performance counters.
Apple macOS
This platform is only supported for remote profiling of Windows and Linux laptops, desktops, workstations, and servers.
View requirements matrix and supported platforms.
Release Notes
2023.1
- UX and performance improvements
2022.5
- Preview of InfiniBand Switch Metrics sampling
- UX and performance improvements
2022.4 - Announcement Post
- NVIDIA Ada Architecture support
- NVIDIA Hopper Architecture support
- UX and performance improvements
2022.3 - Announcement Post
- Vulkan video extension
- Vulkan graphics pipeline library extension
- Improved Linux performance counters
- UX and performance improvements
2022.2 - Announcement Post
- NVIDIA NIC Ethernet metrics sampling
- Vulkan memory operations and warnings
- Vulkan graphics pipeline library
- Multi-report view enhancements
2022.1 - Announcement Post
- Vulkan 1.3 support
- System-wide CPU backtrace sampling and CPU context switch tracing on Linux
- NVIDIA NIC metrics sampling improvements
- MPI trace improvements
- Improvements for remote profiling over SSH
Feature Table
| Feature | Linux Workstations and Servers | Windows Workstations and Gaming PCs | Jetson Autonomous Machines | DRIVE Autonomous Vehicles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| View system-wide application behavior across CPUs and GPUs | ||||
| CPU cores utilization, process, & thread activities | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| CPU thread periodic sampling backtraces | yes* | no | yes | yes |
| CPU thread blocked state backtraces | yes** | yes | yes | yes |
| CPU performance counter sampling | no | no | yes | yes |
| GPU workload trace | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| GPU context switch trace | no | no | yes | yes |
| SOC hypervisor trace | - | - | - | yes |
| SOC memory bandwidth sampling | - | - | yes | yes |
| SOC Accelerators trace | - | - | Xavier | Xavier |
| OS Event Trace | ftrace | ETW | ftrace | ftrace |
| Investigate CPU-GPU interactions and bubbles | ||||
| User annotations API trace NVIDIA Tools Extension API (NVTX) | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| CUDA API | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| CUDA libraries trace (cuBLAS, cuDNN & TensorRT) | yes | no | yes | yes |
| OpenGL API trace | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Vulkan API trace | yes | yes | no | no |
| Direct3D12, Direct3D11, DXR, & PIX APIs | - | yes | - | - |
| OptiX | 7.1+ | 7.1+ | - | - |
| Bidirectional correlation of API and GPU workload | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Identify GPU idle and sparse usage | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Multi-GPU Graphics trace | - | Direct3D12 | - | - |
| Ready for big data | ||||
| Fast GUI capable of visualizing in excess of 10 million events on laptops | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Additional command line collection tool | yes | no | no | no |
| NV-Docker container support | yes | - | - | - |
| NVIDIA GPU Cloud support | yes | - | - | - |
| Minimum user privilege level | user | administrator | root | root |
* On Intel Haswell and newer CPU architecture
** Only with OS runtime trace enabled. Some syscalls such as handcrafted assembly may be missed. Backtraces may only appear if time threasholds are exceeded.
Archives
Access older versions of Nsight Systems in the Gameworks Download Center.
View older version release notes in the Nsight System’s documentation archive.
Resources
Nsight Systems Documentation
You can also learn about installing & using the NVIDIA Tools Extension API (NVTX) here.
Tutorial Sessions
Optimizing Communication with Nsight Systems Network Profiling
Demonstration on how to profile and optimize an application's network usage to improve its overall performance. This includes: identifying network congestion; locating bubbles where the NIC/HCA is idle; figuring out the average packet size used by the application; and understanding latencies caused by the application’s network usage.
Profiling GPU Applications with Nsight Systems
This webinar gives an overview of NVIDIA's Nsight profiling tools. It explores how to analyze and optimize the performance of GPU-accelerated applications. Working with a real-world example, it starts by identifying high-level bottlenecks, then walks through an analysis-driven process leading to a series of kernel-level optimizations.
Optimizing HPC simulation and visualization code using NVIDIA Nsight systems
Watch John Stone, of the NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discuss how he achieved over a 3x performance increase of VMD, a popular tool for analyzing large biomolecular systems.
Fundamentals of Ray Tracing Development using Nsight Graphics and Nsight Systems
earn how to utilize Nsight Graphics and Nsight Systems to profile and optimize 3D Applications that are using Ray Tracing. Using an example application, you'll learn how to: understand how modern GPUs function and how to properly feed the graphics pipeline, identify GPU bottlenecks that degrade performance by inspecting low level metrics, analyze profiler data, and optimize some example workloads to achieve peak performance
Training Series
Nsight Systems - 2019.6 Direct3D11 Feature spotlight
Command Line Sessions Feature spotlight
Nsight Systems - Statistics Driven Profiling
Analyzing NCCL Usage with NVIDIA Nsight Systems
Support
To provide feedback, request additional features, or report support issues, please use the Developer Forums .