[All] Bump minimum supported cuDNN version to 9.12

[cyanguwa]

Description

This PR raises the minimum supported cuDNN version from 9.3 to 9.12 in Transformer Engine. 9.12 is about a year old and we encourage users to update their cuDNN version if they haven't.

Type of change

• Documentation change (change only to the documentation, either a fix or a new content)
• Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to not work as expected)
• Infra/Build change
• Code refactoring

Changes

• README.rst: bump documented minimum cuDNN under System Requirements from 9.3+ to 9.11+.
• docs/installation.rst: bump the cuDNN prerequisite from cuDNN 9.3 or later to cuDNN 9.11 or later.

Checklist:

• I have read and followed the contributing guidelines
• The functionality is complete
• I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas
• I have made corresponding changes to the documentation
• My changes generate no new warnings
• I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works
• New and existing unit tests pass locally with my changes

[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

This PR bumps the documented minimum cuDNN requirement in two RST files. Both README.rst and docs/installation.rst now state cuDNN 9.11+ instead of 9.3+.

• README.rst: System Requirements table updated from cuDNN: 9.3+ to cuDNN: 9.11+.
• docs/installation.rst: Prerequisites updated from cuDNN 9.3 to cuDNN 9.11.

Confidence Score: 4/5

Safe to merge after resolving the version number discrepancy between the PR description and the actual doc changes.

Both changed files consistently set the minimum to 9.11, but the PR title and opening description say 9.12. One of these is a typo, and whichever number is wrong should be corrected before merging to avoid a misleading changelog entry.

Files Needing Attention: Both README.rst and docs/installation.rst reference 9.11 — confirm this is the intended target version.

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
README.rst	Updates minimum cuDNN from 9.3+ to 9.11+; conflicts with PR title/description which says 9.12
docs/installation.rst	Updates cuDNN prerequisite link text and minimum version from 9.3 to 9.11; same version mismatch as README

Flowchart

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
    A[PR: Bump min cuDNN] --> B[README.rst
9.3+ → 9.11+]
    A --> C[docs/installation.rst
9.3 → 9.11]
    A --> D[PR Title & Description
claims: 9.12]
    D -. mismatch .-> B
    D -. mismatch .-> C

Loading

_{Reviews (4): Last reviewed commit: "Merge branch 'main' into update-min-cudn..." | Re-trigger Greptile}

[KshitijLakhani]

IIUC, the minimum version check does not mean that we cannot build with <9.11 right ? It just means that older versions (features) are just unsupported, right ? So the 9.11 is merely a lowest tested/supported version and not a hard runtime/build floor right ?
If my understand is right we do not need to worry about compilation checks during build and these:

TransformerEngine/transformer_engine/jax/csrc/extensions/attention.cpp

Line 186 in 65bdbe3

if (is_ragged && cudnn_runtime_version >= 90300) {

?

TransformerEngine/transformer_engine/jax/cpp_extensions/attention.py

Line 602 in 65bdbe3

# cuDNN version < 9.3.0:

TransformerEngine/transformer_engine/common/fused_attn/fused_attn.cpp

Line 364 in 65bdbe3

(cudnn_runtime_version >= 90300 &&

TransformerEngine/tests/pytorch/attention/test_attention.py

Line 1035 in 65bdbe3

# cuDNN 9.3.0+ is required to run pad_between_seqs = False/True in the same run

---

However, I think these below two might needs anotehr look right ?

• Wouldn't the notebook here need a refresh : docs/examples/attention/attention.ipynb ?
• Also, would we want to refresh the assert in here: tutorial_generation_gemma_with_te.ipynb ?

[sbhavani]

For min version, maybe we could match with a previous PyTorch NGC container (e.g. cuDNN 9.12.0.46 for 25.08) from frameworks support matrix.

[cyanguwa]

I'll do a bit more cleanup throughout the code to support this update, and will update to cuDNN 9.12.

[greptile-apps]

Version mismatch between PR description and documentation

The PR title and opening description both say the minimum is being bumped to 9.12, but both RST files set it to 9.11. If the correct target is 9.11, the PR title and description need a correction; if 9.12 is intended, both docs files need updating. Either way, readers relying on the PR title/description for the changelog entry will see a different number than the docs.