FAISS-GPU compatibility with Windows and CUDA

[rielmvp]

Hello.

I'm new to using FAISS and have been using the cpu version because of issues with using the gpu version of faiss, however the code that I am running takes too long (around 40 hours), and so I think I need to adapt to the faiss-gpu version and I wanted to inquire if it's possible to do so with my environment.

Here's my environment details:
Windows 10
faiss-gpu 1.9.0 installed through https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/faiss-gpu
CUDA 12.1

I read in the installation markdown in the repo that:
"faiss-gpu, containing both CPU and GPU indices, is available on Linux (x86-64 only) for CUDA 11.4 and 12.1".
However, I thought that since the package is available through conda-forge then it is possible to use faiss-gpu on Windows and that the reason I encountered an error is because of a mismatch with my CUDA version. Could anyone clarify if using faiss-gpu on Windows is possible by any chance, or if I have to pivot and run faiss-gpu with a Linux OS environment? Any other insights would be very helpful.

The error I encountered when I tried to access GPU resources using faiss-gpu is:
15:24:49.602 [error] Disposing session as kernel process died ExitCode: 3221226505, Reason: Faiss assertion 'err__ == cudaSuccess' failed in void faiss::gpu::runL2Norm<T, TVec>(faiss::gpu::Tensor<T, 2, true, long long, faiss::gpu::traits::DefaultPtrTraits> &, bool, faiss::gpu::Tensor<float, 1, true, long long, faiss::gpu::traits::DefaultPtrTraits> &, bool, CUstream_st *) at D:\bld\faiss-split_1734665785306\work\faiss\gpu\impl\L2Norm.cu:258; details: CUDA error 209 no kernel image is available for execution on the device

[d8ahazard]

Welcome to the wonderful world of dealing with facebookresearch. A division of one of the richest and most powerful companies on the planet can't be bothered to build or support anything but linux packages, despite the fact that doing so usually requires like a whole HOUR of work...

[myuanz]

Hello, I’ve written a tutorial on building faiss-cuda on Windows, and I hope it will be helpful for others who come across the same need.
https://myuan.fun/all-posts/20250923.faiss-gpu-Windows-en