title: Getting Theano to use the GPU
body: <p>I am having quite a bit of trouble setting up Theano to work with my graphics card - I hope you guys can give me a hand.</p>
  
  <p>I have used CUDA before and it is properly installed as would be necessary to run Nvidia Nsight. However, I now want to use it with PyDev and am having several problems following the 'Using the GPU' part of the tutorial at <a href="http://deeplearning.net/software/theano/install.html#gpu-linux" rel="noreferrer">http://deeplearning.net/software/theano/install.html#gpu-linux</a></p>
  
  <p>The first is quite basic, and that is how to set up the environment variables. It says I should '<strong>Define a $CUDA_ROOT environment variable</strong>'. Several sources have said to create a new '.pam_environment' file in my home directory. I have done this and written the following: </p>
  
  <pre><code>CUDA_ROOT = /usr/local/cuda-5.5/bin
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH = /usr/local/cuda-5.5/lib64/lib
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am not sure if this is exactly the way it has to be written - apologies if this is a basic question. If I could get confirmation that this is indeed the correct place to have written it, too, that would be helpful.</p>
  
  <p>The second problem is in the following part of the tutorial. It says to '<strong>change the device option to name the GPU device in your computer</strong>'. Apparently this has something to do with THEANO_FLAGS and .theanorc, but nowhere am I able to find out what these are: are they files? If so where do I find them? The tutorial seems to be assuming some knowledge that I don't have!</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for taking the time to read this: any and all answers are greatly appreciated - I am very much completely stuck at the moment!</p>