Ubuntu 14.04 LTS : installation of CUDA 6.5 to 8.0

The objective here is to propose a method of installation making it possible to make cohabit several version of CUDA.

The installation described here was done the 10/19/2016 on a freshen udpate system by using :

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get upgrade

We first add the PPA containing newer NVIDIA graphics drivers named Graphics Drivers PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa 
sudo apt-get update

To obtain the list of available Nvidia driver :

apt-cache search nvidia | grep "NVIDIA binary driver"

The output on my computer is

nvidia-340-updates - NVIDIA binary driver - version 340.96 
nvidia-352-updates - NVIDIA binary driver - version 352.63 
nvidia-340 - NVIDIA binary driver - version 340.98 
nvidia-352 - NVIDIA binary driver - version 352.79 
nvidia-355 - NVIDIA binary driver - version 355.11 
nvidia-358 - NVIDIA binary driver - version 358.16 
nvidia-361 - NVIDIA binary driver - version 361.45.18 
nvidia-364 - NVIDIA binary driver - version 364.19 
nvidia-367 - NVIDIA binary driver - version 367.44 
nvidia-370 - NVIDIA binary driver - version 370.28

For compatibility with CUDA 8.0, we must install a driver version greater than ... I choose to install the 367 version.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-367

We want to conserve previous CUDA installation so we don’t use .deb or .rpm packages and we download the CUDA 8.0 install file cuda_8.0.44_linux-run from https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-download.

chmod u+x cuda_8.0.44_linux-run 
sudo ./cuda_8.0.44_linux-run --silent --toolkit --samples --samplespath=/usr/local/cuda-8.0/samples