Get Started With Nsight Systems

Download NVIDIA Nsight Systems

Nsight Systems 2026.1.1 is Available Now

Review the supported platforms for NVIDIA Nsight™ Systems to choose the correct version for your host and profiling target.

If profiling from the CLI, pick your platform based on where the CLI will be run. If using the GUI (Full Version) to view reports, do profiling, or do remote profiling, pick your platform based on the host PC architecture where the GUI will be run.

Also review the system requirements before downloading.

Desktop, workstation, and server platforms:

Kubernetes integration:

JupyterLab integration:

Embedded and automotive platforms:

View Nsight Systems documentation.

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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.

		Profiling Target
		Linux Workstations & Servers	Windows Workstations & Gaming PCs	NVIDIA DPUs & SuperNICs	Jetson & IGX	DRIVE
From Host
	Windows	Remote GUI* Report Viewer**	Local CLI & GUI Remote GUI* Report Viewer**	Remote CLI Remote Report Viewer	Remote Report Viewer	Remote Report Viewer
	Mac	Remote GUI* Report Viewer**	Remote Report Viewer**	Remote Report Viewer	Remote Report Viewer	Remote Report Viewer
	Linux	Local CLI & GUI Remote GUI* Report Viewer**	Remote GUI Report Viewer**	Remote CLI Remote Report Viewer	Remote GUI Report Viewer***	Remote GUI Report Viewer***
	DPU / SuperNIC	N/A	N/A	Local CLI	N/A	N/A
	Jetson	N/A	N/A	N/A	Local CLI & GUI Report Viewer***	N/A
	DRIVE	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Local CLI

* 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

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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.

	Windows Workstations and Gaming PCs	Linux Workstations and Servers	Linux Arm Servers	Jetson and Drive Autonomous Machines
Operating Systems	Windows 10 or newer	Ubuntu 24.04, and 22.04 WSL-Ubuntu 2.0 CentOS 7+* RHEL 8, 9, 10 SLES 15 Debian 12 Fedora 41 KylinOS 10 OpenSUSE 15 Rocky 8, 9	Ubuntu 22.04, and 24.04 Rhel 8, 9 SLES 15	Jetson Linux DRIVE OS
Target Hardware	GPU: Pascal or newer CPU: x86-64 processors	GPU: Pascal or newer CPU: x86-64 processors**	GPU: Pascal or newer Arm-SBSA servers	NVIDIA IGX, Jetson AGX Orin, Jetson AGX Xavier, Jetson TX2, Jetson TX1, DRIVE AGX Orin, 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***	64-bit applications only CUDA 10.0+ for CUDA trace Driver 418 or newer***
Local Profiling	CLI and GUI	CLI and GUI	CLI and GUI	CLI (all platforms), GUI (Jetson Linux only)
Remote Profiling From Platforms	Windows 10+ macOS 13+ Ubuntu 20.04+	Windows 10+ macOS 13+ Ubuntu 20.04+	N/A	Ubuntu 22.04

* For older OS versions, please use Nsight Systems 2020.3
** Intel Haswell architecture or newer is required for LBR sampling backtrace
*** Driver 535 and newer improves GPU profiling stability. Please use the latest driver for the best results. Download here.

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Release Notes

2026.1.1

Highlights

• Pytorch profiling improvements - display shape and training parameters for forward and backward extension modules
• Python sampling - added support for Python 3.14
• GPUDirect Storage Metrics - new option to capture metrics of GPUDirect Storage DMA operations.
• WDDM Trace new option: WDDM Memory Trace
  • This option captures a focused set of WDDM memory events to track VRAM management. This generates reduced overhead and smaller report files allowing longer trace sessions focused on Windows Graphics VRAM management.
  • Note: The default settings for WDDM trace have changed and this new option is the new default for WDDM trace.
• ETW trace - added support for ETW providers that implement TraceLogging
• Graphics VRAM Usage Recipe
  • Support D3D12 placed and reserves resources
  • Support Vulkan resources
• Vulkan trace - added support for VK_EXT_mesh_shader extension
• The –nvprof CLI option has been removed from the tool.
• Export changes
  • Text and JSON export options are removed from both the CLI and the GUI. Using these options (e.g. nsys export --type=text ... or nsys profile --export=json ...) will result in an error. In this release, this can be circumvented by setting the NSYS_ENABLE_DEPRECATED_TEXT_EXPORT=1 and NSYS_ENABLE_DEPRECATED_JSON_EXPORT=1 environment variables respectively, but make sure to adjust your affected processes/scripts, as in the next release these options will be completely removed.
  • Instead of the JSON export option, the jsonlines option is now available. Similarly, it produces a text file with one JSON object per line, but in a slightly different format compared to the old json export.
• NVIDIA Nsight Streamer improvements now available on NGC for viewing reports on remote headless servers
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
• NVIDIA Nsight Operator for Kubernetes improvements - Releasing soon on NGC
  • Learn more here and apply for early access features

2025.6.1

Highlights

• CUDA improvements
  • CUDA version compatibility update
  • System-wide CUDA Trace – Adds --cuda-trace-scope to select between tracing process trees or the entire system.
  • CUDA Host Function Trace – Added trace support for CUDA Graph host function nodes and cudaLaunchHostFunc(), which executes on the host and blocks the stream.
  • CUDA Hardware Trace is now default – Hardware-based tracing is now default when supported, and fallback to software for various conflicts or unsupported situations. Use --trace=cuda-sw to force to software mode.
  • Green Context SM Allocation Tooltip – Green context rows now show SM allocation in tooltips for better GPU resource insight.
• CPU Metrics Sampling improvements - Added time-based multiplexing.
• NCCL Trace improvements
  • Detailed visibility into operations within fused GPU kernels.
  • Correlation across all events of one collective operation, properly linking API calls, runtime scheduling, and GPU operations even across different threads, processes, and CUDA graph captures.
• Pytorch Trace improvements - Added forward methods and training parameters.
• Python Sampling improvements - Better backtrace display in timeline tooltips and events view.
• VRAM Usage Recipe
  • Analyze Windows graphics resource allocation, migration, event history, allocation callstack and perf markers.
  • Display a diff of Windows VRAM residency between graphics frames.
• Plugin GUI Project Properties improvements - Added UI controls for configuration of each plugin to be applied to the next profiling session.
• Debuginfod Servers for Linux - Now supported along with DEBUGINFOD_URLS environment variable.
• NVIDIA Nsight Streamer improvements now available on NGC for viewing reports on remote headless servers
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
• NVIDIA Nsight Operator for Kubernetes improvements - Releasing soon on NGC
  • Learn more here and apply for early access features

2025.5.1

Highlights

• Vulkan1.4 trace
  • Nsight Systems’ Vulkan API trace has been extended to include significant additional functions from the Vulkan 1.4 standard and extensions set.
• Graphics 2D Frame Duration charts
  • The Frame Duration charts (CPU frames and GPU frames) now use two-dimensional visualization, expressing frame duration on the timeline by the horizontal length of the frame range as well as the frame rectangle’s vertical height.
  • This chart design makes stutter frames “pop” above the surrounding frame duration ranges.
• Linux File Access recipe
  • A comprehensive analysis of file access patterns and I/O performance statistics from Nsight Systems reports, supporting single or multiple profiled processes across different machines.
• NVIDIA Nsight Streamer improvements now available on NGC for viewing reports on remote headless servers
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
• NVIDIA Nsight Operator improvements releasing soon on NGC for Kubernetes
  • Learn more here and apply for early access features

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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*	yes	yes	yes
CPU thread blocked state backtraces	yes**	yes	yes	yes
CPU performance metrics	yes	no	yes	yes
GPU workload trace	yes	yes	yes	yes
GPU context switch trace	yes	yes	yes	yes
SOC hypervisor trace	-	-	-	yes
SOC memory bandwidth sampling	-	-	yes	yes
SOC Accelerators trace	-	-	Xavier+	Xavier+
OS Event Trace	ftrace	ETW	ftrace	ftrace, QNX kernel events
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	-	-
OpenXR	-	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	OpenGL and Vulkan	Direct3D12, OpenGL and Vulkan	-	-
Trace graphics resource migration between VRAM and System Memory	-	yes	-	-
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.

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Archives

Access older versions of Nsight Systems in the Gameworks Download Center.
View older version release notes in the Nsight System’s documentation archive.

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Resources

Nsight Systems Documentation

You can also learn about installing & using the NVIDIA Tools Extension API (NVTX) here.

Nsight Tools Tutorial Center

Access the latest resources to get started with Nsight Systems.

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Access Self-Paced Training

Nsight Systems Documentation

Get hands on training for Nsight Systems with self-paced online courses from the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute.

See more courses on Accelerated Computing for Developers.

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Tutorial Sessions

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Video Series

Learn about using Nsight Systems for CUDA Development in the CUDA Developer Tools tutorial series.

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Support

To provide feedback, request additional features, or report support issues, please use the Developer Forums .