Compiling from Source

Linux

To compile from source, you need the following:

• The ability to compile C++ (gcc, make, headers, etc)
• CMake (version 3.22.1 or newer)
• Python 3.10 or newer
• The CUDA toolkit (nvcc)

On Ubuntu, install the first two with apt-get install -y build-essential cmake.

To install the CUDA toolkit, follow the instructions from your distro.

To install the package from source, then run

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
cmake -DCOMPUTE_BACKEND=cuda -S .
make
pip install .

If you have multiple versions of CUDA installed, or have installed it in a non-standard location, please refer to cmake CUDA documentation for how to configure the CUDA compiler used.

Windows

The following is required to install from source on Windows

• Microsoft Visual Studio with C++ support
• CMake (version 3.22.1 or newer)
• Python 3.10 or newer
• The CUDA toolkit (nvcc)

To install the CUDA toolkit, follow the instructions for Windows.

To install the package from source, then run

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
cmake -DCOMPUTE_BACKEND=cuda -S .
cmake --build . --config Release
pip install .

Compilation for Kepler Architecture

From version 0.39.1, bitsandbytes no longer includes Kepler binaries in pip installations, requiring manual compilation. Follow the general steps and use cuda11x_nomatmul_kepler for Kepler-targeted compilation.