cublasCreate

cublasCreate is a function within the NVIDIA CUDA Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (CUBLAS) library. Its primary purpose is to initialize a CUBLAS library context. A CUBLAS context is essential for any subsequent calls to other CUBLAS routines. It manages the internal state and resources required for performing BLAS operations on the GPU.

When cublasCreate is successfully invoked, it returns a handle to this newly created context. This handle, typically a cublasHandle_t data type, must then be passed as the first argument to all other CUBLAS API functions. This handle links the operation to the specific GPU resources and context that were initialized.

It is important to note that before a program terminates or before creating another context, the context created by cublasCreate should be destroyed using the cublasDestroy function. Failing to do so can lead to resource leaks. The creation of a CUBLAS context is a relatively low-overhead operation, but it is a necessary prerequisite for leveraging the high-performance GPU-accelerated linear algebra capabilities offered by the CUBLAS library. Multiple independent CUBLAS contexts can be created, allowing for concurrent operations on different GPUs or with different configurations.