From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Fri May 7 11:00:23 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A97D516A4CF for ; Fri, 7 May 2004 11:00:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sccrmhc13.comcast.net (sccrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.202.64]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C7C5C43D41 for ; Fri, 7 May 2004 11:00:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from julian@elischer.org) Received: from interjet.elischer.org ([24.7.73.28]) by comcast.net (sccrmhc13) with ESMTP id <20040507180020016000064ke>; Fri, 7 May 2004 18:00:20 +0000 Received: from localhost (localhost.elischer.org [127.0.0.1]) by InterJet.elischer.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA96954; Fri, 7 May 2004 11:00:17 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 7 May 2004 11:00:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Julian Elischer To: Doug Rabson In-Reply-To: <1083948649.5822.7.camel@builder02.qubesoft.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: Kenneth Culver cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: nVidia FX Support? X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 18:00:23 -0000 That's good news.. I haven't seen any submits for a while and had assumed that Real Life(TM) was taking a priority for a while.. I didn; know that you had reached that point already! I assume you are talking about static TLS? Can you give an executive summary of where we are on this? thanks! On Fri, 7 May 2004, Doug Rabson wrote: > On Thu, 2004-05-06 at 20:09, Julian Elischer wrote: > > On Thu, 6 May 2004, Jason Andresen wrote: > > > > > Kenneth Culver wrote: > > > > > > > Quoting Jason Andresen : > > > > > > > >> 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). > > For what its worth, TLS works nicely in the P4 kse branch for i386. > > >