whisper.cpp Windows Universal Binary Package

This repository provides a community-compiled whisper.exe for Windows x64, requiring no local compilation. It supports a wide range of NVIDIA GPUs (from Maxwell sm_50 to Hopper sm_100) and automatically falls back to CPU when no GPU is available.

---

Why Recompile?

The official prebuilt binaries typically include GPU kernels for common hardware (e.g., sm_86). Older or less common GPUs (like the GTX 960M with sm_50) lack corresponding kernels and cause runtime errors such as:

CUDA error: no kernel image is available for execution on the device

To solve this compatibility gap, we rebuilt with the following CMake options:

-DCMAKE_CUDA_ARCHITECTURES=50^;52^;53^;60^;61^;62^;70^;72^;75^;80^;86^;87^;89^;90^;100^

• CMAKE_CUDA_ARCHITECTURES=…
  Statically compiles kernels for 19 compute capabilities (from sm_50 to sm_100), ensuring nearly all NVIDIA GPUs work out of the box.
• GGML_CUDA_DYNARCH=OFF
  Disables runtime architecture probing and relies solely on the above static list.
• BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF
  Statically links all components (whisper, ggml, ggml-cpu, ggml-cuda) into a single whisper.exe, eliminating runtime plugin scanning and improving startup speed.

---

Included Files

After extracting whisper-win.zip, you only need these four files:

File	Description
whisper.exe	Main executable (GPU/CPU)
cudart64_12.dll	CUDA Runtime 12.x
cublas64_12.dll	cuBLAS 12.x
cublasLt64_12.dll	cuBLAS Lt 12.x

These DLLs come from the CUDA Toolkit bin/ directory; you do not need a full CUDA installation.

---

Quick Start

1. Download a model

   curl -L -o model.bin \
     https://huggingface.co/ggerganov/whisper.cpp/resolve/main/models/ggml-base.en.bin
   

2. Extract and navigate

   unzip whisper-win.zip -d whisper-win
   cd whisper-win
   

3. Run transcription

   whisper.exe -m model.bin -f audio.wav --language zh -otxt
   

   • -m: path to the model file
   • -f: audio file to transcribe (WAV/MP3)
   • --language: e.g. zh, en
   • -otxt: output as plain text

4. Automatic CPU fallback
   If no NVIDIA GPU or driver is found, the program seamlessly uses the CPU backend.

---

System Requirements

• OS: Windows 10 or 11 (x64)
• NVIDIA Driver: Compatible with CUDA 12.x (recommend R560 or newer)
• Visual C++ Redistributable: Microsoft Visual C++ 2015–2022

---

License

• whisper.cpp & ggml: MIT License
  (See the original LICENSE)
• CUDA Runtime & cuBLAS: NVIDIA EULA (retain NVIDIA’s license notices when redistributing)

---

Feel free to open issues if you encounter any problems or have suggestions!