feat(gpu): offer the CUDA pack to Pascal cards (0.0.9 kernel floor) - #1585
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whisper.cpp release 0.0.9 ships sm_61 kernels (and compute_61 PTX that covers Volta via driver JIT), so the offering gate drops from 7.5 to 6.1 — GTX 10-series cards get the CUDA pack instead of being routed to Vulkan. Maxwell and older stay on Vulkan. The picker now prefers whichever backend is already installed: a Pascal user running the Vulkan pack keeps their working chip instead of being re-prompted with a 772 MB CUDA download the moment the gate opens. This matches the runtime resolver, which only prefers CUDA once it is actually downloaded. HOLD FOR HARDWARE SMOKE TEST on a Pascal card before merging (CI proves sm_61 compiles; only a real GPU proves the kernels run).
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⏸ HOLD — do not merge until the Pascal smoke test below passes on real hardware.
With #1584 pinning the packs to whisper.cpp 0.0.9 (which ships sm_61 kernels), this lowers
MIN_CUDA_COMPUTE_CAPfrom 7.5 to 6.1 so GTX 10-series cards are offered the CUDA pack.Exactly who this affects
Prefer-installed-backend fix included
Without it, a Pascal user already running the Vulkan pack would see the "Enable GPU" CUDA banner reappear over a working setup the moment this gate opens. The picker now prefers whichever pack is installed — mirroring the runtime resolver, which only prefers CUDA once it's actually downloaded. Their dictation never changes out from under them either way.
Bounded worst case (already shipped)
If a Pascal kernel still fails on some card: the dictation completes via the CPU fallback retry, the failure is persisted (
WHISPER_GPU_FAILED) so it's never re-attempted silently, and the chip shows "GPU could not be activated — Retry". Nobody loses words; the cost is one wasted download.Go / no-go: Pascal smoke test
On a GTX 10-series machine running this build:
whisper-server-statusreportsgpuBackend: "cuda".Full suite: 1923 pass / 0 fail, typecheck + prettier clean.