First Setup for ML

Let’s get a place to run code on the GPU (on Windows, don’t judge me, it’s where my GPU lives). I’m going to setup:

• Python
• Jupyter
• PyTorch with CUDA

Download and install Python: https://www.python.org/downloads/

For some reason my Python didn’t come with pip so I also ran

python -m ensurepip
python -m pip install --upgrade pip

For Jupyter I’m also going through pip. Installing everything globally. I’ll use venv later for project specific dependencies:

python -m pip install jupyterlab
# or
python -m pip install notebook

# then try it by running
jupyter lab
# or
jupyter notebook

Now, to get GPU acceleration. Install CUDA, head up to PyTorch https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/ and download a supported version of CUDA

Download the 11.8.0 version of CUDA: https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-archive. Press next, next, next and skip installing Visual Studio. We can confirm that it worked by running nvcc --version.

And install PyTorch with CUDA support

python -m pip install torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu118

Double check it worked by running in a notebook

import torch

print(f'{torch.cuda.is_available()=}')
print(f'{torch.cuda.device_count()=}')
print(f'{torch.cuda.get_device_name()=}')

torch.cuda.is_available()=True
torch.cuda.device_count()=1
torch.cuda.get_device_name()='NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080'