Fix clw-gpu-failure: OpenClaw GPU Initialization and Runtime Failure

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:08:04 +0800

1. Symptoms

The clw-gpu-failure error manifests when OpenClaw attempts to initialize, access, or utilize GPU resources for accelerated computation and encounters an unrecoverable state. This error typically surfaces during application startup, kernel compilation, or when submitting compute workloads to GPU devices.

Common indicators of this failure include terminal output containing the error signature followed by a descriptive sub-code:

[OpenClaw Error] clw-gpu-failure: DEVICE_INIT_FAILED
[OpenClaw Error] clw-gpu-failure: KERNEL_COMPILE_ERROR
[OpenClaw Error] clw-gpu-failure: RUNTIME_CRASH
[OpenClaw Error] clw-gpu-failure: MEMORY_ALLOCATION_FAILED

Additional symptoms may accompany the primary error message. Users frequently report incomplete GPU enumeration where the system identifies fewer devices than physically present, or zero devices reported despite dedicated graphics hardware being installed. Applications may hang indefinitely during GPU-bound operations, or crash with segmentation faults when attempting to access GPU memory addresses. Performance profiling tools may show GPU utilization remaining at zero percent despite active compute submissions, indicating that work batches are failing before reaching device execution queues.

Acceleration on ErrorVault — Developer Error Code Dictionary

Fix clw-gpu-failure: OpenClaw GPU Initialization and Runtime Failure

1. Symptoms