nvcc fatal : Unknown option '--threads' - cmake

Question

I have installed CUDA-11.3 and NVIDIA Driver Version 465, CMAKE version 3.16.3.
I was trying to compile samples included in th toolkit to verify the installation but getting the following error.
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/user/NVIDIA_CUDA-11.3_Samples/0_Simple/simpleSeparateCompilation'
/usr/local/cuda/bin/nvcc -ccbin g++ -I../../common/inc -m64 -dc --threads 0 -gencode arch=compute_35,code=sm_35 -gencode arch=compute_37,code=sm_37 -gencode arch=compute_50,code=sm_50 -gencode arch=compute_52,code=sm_52 -gencode arch=compute_60,code=sm_60 -gencode arch=compute_61,code=sm_61 -gencode arch=compute_70,code=sm_70 -gencode arch=compute_75,code=sm_75 -gencode arch=compute_80,code=sm_80 -gencode arch=compute_86,code=sm_86 -gencode arch=compute_86,code=compute_86 -o simpleDeviceLibrary.o -c simpleDeviceLibrary.cu
nvcc fatal : Unknown option '--threads'
make[1]: *** [Makefile:321: simpleDeviceLibrary.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/user/NVIDIA_CUDA-11.3_Samples/0_Simple/simpleSeparateCompilation'
make: *** [Makefile:51: 0_Simple/simpleSeparateCompilation/Makefile.ph_build] Error 2

Answer 1

The --threads option (which controls the number of threads which nvcc will attempt to spawn during compilation) was only added to nvcc 11.3.
The OP was unwittingly using nvcc 11.1 to try and compile samples from the CUDA 11.3 toolkit using the supplied Makefiles, which include this option. This resulted in an unrecognized option error and build failure.
If you have this problem, double check that your compiler is new enough to accept this compiler option and that search paths/symlinks/modulefiles etc. are really updated to point to that compiler version.