# NVIDIA Visual Profiler

As of CTK 13.0, Nsight Visual Profiler has been discontinued. Use [Nsight Systems](https://developer.nvidia.com/nsight-systems) for profiling system performance and [Nsight Compute](https://developer.nvidia.com/nsight-compute) for kernel profiling.

The NVIDIA Visual Profiler is a cross-platform performance profiling tool that delivers developers vital feedback for optimizing CUDA C/C++ applications. First introduced in 2008, Visual Profiler supports all 350 million+ CUDA capable NVIDIA GPUs shipped since 2006 on Linux, Windows, and ARM. The NVIDIA Visual Profiler is available as part of the [CUDA Toolkit.](/cuda-downloads)

Note that [NVIDIA® CUDA Toolkit 11.0](https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit) (and later) no longer supports development or running applications on macOS. While there are no tools which use macOS as a target environment, NVIDIA made the [macOS host version of Visual Profiler available up to CUDA 12.4](/nvidia-cuda-toolkit-12_4_0-developer-tools-mac-hosts). However, the macOS host versions were dropped as of CUDA 12.5.

Note that PowerPC versions were also dropped as of CUDA 12.5.

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### Overview

- **Focus on the information that matters**  
 Quickly identify potential performance bottleneck issues in your applications using highly configurable tables and graphical views
- **Automated performance analysis**  
 Perform automated analysis of your application to identify performance bottlenecks and get optimization suggestions that can be used to improve performance
- **Unified CPU and GPU Timeline**  
 View CUDA activity occurring on both CPU and GPU in a unified time line, including CUDA API calls, memory transfers and CUDA launches.
- **CUDA API trace**  
 View all memory transfers, kernel launches, and other API functions on the same timeline
- **Drill down to raw data**  
 Gain low-level insights by looking at performance metrics collected directly from GPU hardware counters and software instrumentation.
- **Compare results across multiple sessions**  
 Confirm performance improvements by comparing against previous sessions
- **Analyze data collected from remote systems**  
 Use the command line profiler using environment variables to collect data from multiple systems and analyze the results in Visual Profiler
- **CUDA Dynamic Parallelism**  
 View timeline for applications that use CUDA Dynamic Parallelism including both host-launched and device-launched kernels and the parent-child relationship between kernels.
- **Guided Application Analysis**  
 Use the guided analysis mode has to get step-by-step analysis and optimization guidance. The analysis results now include graphical visualizations to more clearly indicate the optimization opportunities.
- **Power, thermal, and clock profiling**  
 Observe how GPU power, thermal, and clock values vary during application execution

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The latest version of Visual Profiler with support for both CUDA C/C++ applications is available with the [CUDA Toolkit](/cuda-downloads) and is supported on all platforms supported by the CUDA Toolkit.

Developers should be sure to check out [NVIDIA Nsight Systems](/nsight-systems) for our next generation profiling tool with Linux, Windows, and Arm support. Be sure to review our [tool migration recommendations](https://news.developer.nvidia.com/migrating-to-the-latest-versions-of-the-nsight-suite/) to make your transition easier.

For development and debugging on Windows, see [Nsight Visual Studio Edition](/nvidia-nsight-visual-studio-edition) and [NVIDIA Nsight Systems](/nsight-systems) Visual Studio integration with [NVIDIA Nsight Integration](/nsight-tools-visual-studio-integration).

For more information on the Visual Profiler and other CUDA development tools:

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- [Visual Profiler Documentation](http://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/profiler-users-guide/index.html)
- [CUDA C Best Practices Guide](/nvidia-gpu-computing-documentation#cudacbestpractices)
- [NVIDIA Nsight Systems](/nsight-systems)
  - [Next Generation Tool Migration Guide](https://news.developer.nvidia.com/migrating-to-the-latest-versions-of-the-nsight-suite/)
  - [NVIDIA Nsight Systems](/nsight-systems) Visual Studio integration with [NVIDIA Nsight Integration](/nsight-tools-visual-studio-integration)

- [More performance analysis tools for GPU developers](/performance-analysis-tools)

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### Questions on CUDA Tools?

If you encounter difficulty with any of the CUDA Tools or have more questions please contact the NVIDIA tools team at [(cudatools@nvidia.com)](mailto:cudatools@nvidia.com).