This is going to be a tutorial on how to install tensorflow 1.8.0 GPU version. We will also be installing CUDA 9.2 and cuDNN 7.1.4 along with the GPU version of tensorflow 1.8.0. At the time of writing this blog post, the latest version of tensorflow is 1.8.0.This tutorial is for building tensorflow from source. If you want to use the official pre-built pip package instead, I recommend another post, How to install Tensorflow 1.7.0 using official pip package.

Update: We have a released a new article on How to install Tensorflow GPU with CUDA 10.0 for python on Ubuntu.

Tensorflow is an open source software library developed and used by Google that is fairly common among students, researchers, and developers for deep learning applications such as neural networks. It has both the CPU as well as GPU version available and although the CPU version works quite well, realistically, if you are going for deep learning, you will need GPU. In order to use the GPU version of TensorFlow, you will need an NVIDIA GPU with a compute capability > 3.0. While it is technically possible to install tensorflow GPU version in a virtual machine, you cannot access the full power of your GPU via a virtual machine. So, I recommend doing a fresh install of Ubuntu if you don’t have Ubuntu before starting with the tutorial.

Tensorflow 1.8 with CUDA 9.2 and cuDNN 7.1.4 performs up to 37% faster when compared to earlier versions of Tensorflow. View full results here.

There must be 64-bit python installed tensorflow does not work on 32-bit python installation.

Step 1: Update and Upgrade your system:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2: Verify You Have a CUDA-Capable GPU:

lspci | grep -i nvidia

Note GPU model. eg. GeForce 840M

If you do not see any settings, update the PCI hardware database that Linux maintains by entering update-pciids (generally found in /sbin) at the command line and rerun the previous lspci command.

If your graphics card is from NVIDIA then goto http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus and verify if listed in CUDA enabled gpu list.

Note down its Compute Capability. eg. GeForce 840M 5.0

Step 3: Verify You Have a Supported Version of Linux:

To determine which distribution and release number you’re running, type the following at the command line:

uname -m && cat /etc/*release

The x86_64 line indicates you are running on a 64-bit system which is supported by cuda 9.1

Step 4: Install Dependencies:

Required to compile from source:

sudo apt-get install build-essential sudo apt-get install cmake git unzip zip sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install python2.7-dev python3.5-dev python3.6-dev pylint

Step 5: Install linux kernel header:

Goto terminal and type:

uname -r

You can get like “4.10.0-42-generic”. Note down linux kernel version.

To install linux header supported by your linux kernel do following:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Step 6: Install NVIDIA CUDA 9.2:

Remove previous cuda installation:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia* sudo apt-get autoremove sudo apt-get autoclean sudo rm -rf /usr/local/cuda*

Install cuda :

For Ubuntu 16.04 :

sudo apt-key adv --fetch-keys http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu1604/x86_64/7fa2af80.pub echo "deb https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu1604/x86_64 /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cuda.list

For Ubuntu 17.10 and Ubuntu 18.04 :

sudo apt-key adv --fetch-keys http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu1710/x86_64/7fa2af80.pub echo "deb https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu1710/x86_64 /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cuda.list

For Both Options:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-overwrite" install cuda-9-2 cuda-drivers

Step 7: Reboot the system to load the NVIDIA drivers.

Step 8: Go to terminal and type:

echo 'export PATH=/usr/local/cuda-9.2/bin${PATH:+:${PATH}}' >> ~/.bashrc echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/cuda-9.2/lib64${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}}' >> ~/.bashrc

source ~/.bashrc sudo ldconfig nvidia-smi

Check driver version probably Driver Version: 396.26

(not likely) If you got nvidia-smi is not found then you have unsupported linux kernel installed. Comment your linux kernel version noted in step 5.