Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 12:19:22 -0400 From: Kenneth Culver <culverk@sweetdreamsracing.biz> To: Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: nVidia FX Support? Message-ID: <20040506121922.1x74kc080osgsocw@www.sweetdreamsracing.biz> In-Reply-To: <409A5F5F.1050202@mitre.org> References: <40982623.2090804@bellsouth.net> <20040505102632.73f67bbe.manlix@demonized.net> <"115944527.20040505 112857"@andric.com> <20040505141924.GF34693@sirius.firepipe.net> <409A566A.803@mitre.org> <20040506113745.ojg9sgkkc800s8cs@www.sweetdreamsracing.biz> <409A5F5F.1050202@mitre.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Quoting Jason Andresen <jandrese@mitre.org>: > 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. > http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/todo.html According to the above page, TLS isn't implemented: GCC 3.4 is needed to support TLS on all our our Tier-1 platforms. It also is likely to be better maintained by the FSF during the lifespan on 5.x than GCC 3.3 is. There are a few other entries there relating to TLS as well. Ken
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20040506121922.1x74kc080osgsocw>