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Date:      Thu, 6 May 2004 12:09:03 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>
To:        Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: nVidia FX Support?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0405061207490.82978-100000@InterJet.elischer.org>
In-Reply-To: <409A5F5F.1050202@mitre.org>

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On Thu, 6 May 2004, Jason Andresen wrote:

> Kenneth Culver wrote:
> 
> > Quoting Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org>:
> > 
> >> Will Andrews wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 11:28:57AM +0200, Dimitry Andric wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> The problem is that NVidia hasn't updated its binary-only FreeBSD
> >>>> driver since July 1st, 2003.  Any cards released after this date will
> >>>> not work properly, or at all, with this driver.  So please go bug
> >>>> NVidia. :)
> >>>>
> >>>> But, see also this thread:
> >>>> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-threads/2003-June/000530.html 
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> which might explain why it takes forever for new drivers to arrive. :(
> >>
> >>
> >> Ugh, reading through that thread I got a bad bad feeling that it will be
> >> ages before we see another NVidia driver.  The NVidia engineer is
> >> unwilling to proceed without his %gs register, and the FreeBSD engineers
> >> are unwilling to give it to him because the fast thread switching needs
> >> it for good performance.  The NVidia engineers needs the %gs register
> >> for good performance, and will not release drivers that are 10-50%
> >> slower than the Windows ones.
> >>
> >> It looks like the whole situation is at a standstill at the moment,
> >> which means we get no new drivers until the whole thing is sorted out.
> >> It's really distressing to see how frustrated the NVidia engineer was by
> >> the end of the thread.
> >>
> > I'm pretty sure that the FreeBSD people are working on TLS, which will 
> > allow the
> > nvidia people to be happy.
> 
> Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it seems like TLS is what got them in 
> all of this trouble in the first place.  It seems that FreeBSD's 
> implementation uses the %gs register, which NVidia also wants to use.

%gs is not theirs to use.. linux also uses the %gs register
for thread identification

however when TLS is implemented then they will 'piggyback' on th thread
sytem, (so to speak).


> 
> 
> -- 
>    \  |_ _|__ __|_ \ __| Jason Andresen        jandrese@mitre.org
>   |\/ |  |    |    / _|  Network and Distributed Systems Engineer
> _|  _|___|  _| _|_\___| Office: 703-883-7755
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