From d54c36f28e95f98f03d77f126dea5be9c07f4696 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Shizoqua
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2026 20:40:34 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] Clarify CUDA/CuPy install requirements in docs (#8106)
Signed-off-by: Shizoqua
---
docs/source/installation.md | 29 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
1 file changed, 27 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/docs/source/installation.md b/docs/source/installation.md
index 5123bc3e6b..ed42f00699 100644
--- a/docs/source/installation.md
+++ b/docs/source/installation.md
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
- [Installation Guide](#installation-guide)
- [Table of Contents](#table-of-contents)
+ - [GPU-enabled installation (CUDA and CuPy)](#gpu-enabled-installation-cuda-and-cupy)
- [From PyPI](#from-pypi)
- [Milestone release](#milestone-release)
- [Weekly preview release](#weekly-preview-release)
@@ -30,12 +31,33 @@ Ignite](https://pytorch.org/ignite/), please follow the instructions:
- [Installing the recommended dependencies](#installing-the-recommended-dependencies)
-The installation commands below usually end up installing CPU variant of PyTorch. To install GPU-enabled PyTorch:
+---
+
+## GPU-enabled installation (CUDA and CuPy)
+
+The installation commands below usually end up installing the CPU variant of PyTorch. To install GPU-enabled PyTorch:
1. Install the latest NVIDIA driver.
1. Check [PyTorch Official Guide](https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/) for the recommended CUDA versions. For Pip package, the user needs to download the CUDA manually, install it on the system, and ensure CUDA_PATH is set properly.
1. Continue to follow the guide and install PyTorch.
-1. Install MONAI using one the ways described below.
+1. Install MONAI using one of the ways described below.
+
+Installing GPU-enabled PyTorch is enough to run models and transforms on the GPU. Some transforms,
+however, additionally use [CuPy](https://cupy.dev/) for GPU-accelerated array operations (for example
+when a transform converts a CUDA tensor via `convert_to_cupy`). If CuPy is not installed, these code
+paths raise `OptionalImportError: import cupy (No module named 'cupy')`.
+
+CuPy is provided through the `cucim` extra, so installing MONAI with that extra pulls in a compatible
+CuPy build:
+
+```bash
+pip install 'monai[cucim]'
+```
+
+If you prefer to install CuPy directly, note that the PyPI package name is CUDA-version specific
+(e.g. `cupy-cuda12x` for CUDA 12.x, `cupy-cuda11x` for CUDA 11.x) rather than plain `cupy`. See the
+[CuPy installation guide](https://docs.cupy.dev/en/stable/install.html) for the correct package for
+your CUDA toolkit.
---
@@ -261,3 +283,6 @@ which correspond to `nibabel`, `scikit-image`,`scipy`, `pillow`, `tensorboard`,
`gdown`, `pytorch-ignite`, `torchvision`, `itk`, `tqdm`, `lmdb`, `psutil`, `cucim`, `openslide-python`, `pandas`, `einops`, `transformers`, `mlflow`, `clearml`, `matplotlib`, `tensorboardX`, `tifffile`, `imagecodecs`, `pyyaml`, `fire`, `jsonschema`, `ninja`, `pynrrd`, `pydicom`, `h5py`, `nni`, `optuna`, `onnx`, `onnxruntime`, `zarr`, `lpips`, `nvidia-ml-py`, `huggingface_hub` and `pyamg` respectively.
- `pip install 'monai[all]'` installs all the optional dependencies.
+- The `cucim` extra also provides [CuPy](https://cupy.dev/), which is required by GPU-accelerated
+ transforms. See [GPU-enabled installation (CUDA and CuPy)](#gpu-enabled-installation-cuda-and-cupy)
+ for details.