The compute capability describes the features of the hardware and reflects the set of instructions supported by the device as well as other specifications, such as the maximum number of threads per block and the number of registers per multiprocessor. Higher compute capability versions are supersets of lower (that is, earlier) versions, and so they are backward compatible.
The compute capability of the GPU in the device can be queried programmatically as illustrated in the CUDA SDK in the deviceQuery sample. The output for that program is shown in Figure 1. This information is obtained by calling cudaGetDeviceProperties() and accessing the information in the structure it returns.
The major and minor revision numbers of the compute capability are shown on the third and fourth lines of Figure 1. Device 0 of this system has compute capability 1.1.
More details about the compute capabilities of various GPUs are in Appendices A and F of the CUDA C Programming Guide. In particular, developers should note the number of multiprocessors on the device, the number of registers and the amount of memory available, and any special capabilities of the device.