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Date:      Sun, 28 Sep 2014 13:00:13 +0200
From:      "O. Hartmann" <ohartman@zedat.fu-berlin.de>
To:        Jan =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Kokem=FCller?= <jan.kokemueller@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-x11@freebsd.org, FreeBSD CURRENT <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: x11/nvidia-driver (340.24/340.32/343.13): nvidia BLOB doesn't recognize any display socket on Lenovo E540/UEFI and FBSD CURRENT
Message-ID:  <20140928130013.64cd74c9.ohartman@zedat.fu-berlin.de>
In-Reply-To: <5427DD70.5080906@gmail.com>
References:  <20140919201210.72650231.ohartman@zedat.fu-berlin.de> <alpine.BSF.2.11.1409200727510.96859@wonkity.com> <20140920161012.02844320.ohartman@zedat.fu-berlin.de> <alpine.BSF.2.11.1409200824500.96859@wonkity.com> <20140920191530.6b538c62.ohartman@zedat.fu-berlin.de> <20140920201347.0a4b9658.ohartman@zedat.fu-berlin.de> <1411240906.1174.2.camel@rainbow-runner.nl> <20140928114154.5f9c37cb.ohartman@zedat.fu-berlin.de> <5427DD70.5080906@gmail.com>

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Am Sun, 28 Sep 2014 12:05:36 +0200
Jan Kokem=FCller <jan.kokemueller@gmail.com> schrieb:

>=20
> On 28.09.2014 11:41, O. Hartmann wrote:
> > Without nouveau driver, FreeBSD people do not have the slightes chance =
to play with
> > OpenCL/libclc on nVidia's hardware.
>=20
> Some time in the past it was possible to run CUDA/OpenCL Linux binaries=20
> with the Nvidia driver in Linux emulation mode on FreeBSD:
>=20
> https://web.archive.org/web/20121015180221/http://blogs.freebsdish.org/jh=
b/2010/07/20/using-cuda-with-the-native-freebsdamd64-nvidia-driver
>=20
> Not sure if that still works though.

Well, I went through this stuff that time and from the date, you can see it=
s four years in
the past! There was also thast promising thing from Pathscale, HMPC ast pro=
mising thing
from Pathscale, HMPC or similar, now OpenACC. But at the end it was a "drea=
m-bubble".

And as far as I know: even the Linuxulator is ways behind the recent develo=
pment and
still 32Bit (ancient, so to speak). I do not want myself having lots of out=
dated hard-
and software running and developing on outdated platforms.

And it is even worse: some new technology utilizing LLVM, libCLC, most rece=
nt MESA libs
and the most recent opensource graphics driver provide rudimentary OpenCL s=
upport for the
GPU - but as I stated in the thread concerning the missing WiFi Intel 7260 =
support -
FreeBSD hasn't even the xf86-video-nouveau driver anymore which is supposed=
 to work best
in that scenario.

I had very longish discussions in 2010 about this subject - from a naiv non=
-developer
point of view. I was always told, FreeBSD is an OS for servers and we all k=
now, that
servers do not rely on graphics hardware that much as it is important for g=
raphics
workstations and not at least desktop machines.
But what we faced five years ago in science regarding the rapid development=
 of OpenCL and
GPGPU showed me very ckearly that GPU hardware is becoming dramatically imp=
ortant. With
AMD providing powerful iGPUs and now Intel doing the same, number crunching=
 isn't the
domain of physicists and numerical geeks anymore, GEGL starts to incorporat=
e OpenCL and
GIMP is about to utilize the GPU as well. BLENDER is utilizing CUDA in Linu=
x and I guess
OpenCL is also on the way. And if this isn't convincing: I read about cloud=
 computing
with massively parallelized TESLA backends, a typical domain of dump and un=
exciting
hardware and their operating systems. And guess what? The key is obviously =
the support of
the graphical functionality, not necessarily the X11 desktop it self.

The project that time in 2010, where we were supposed and inclined to use F=
reeBSD as the
development platform for a highly parallelized application for planetary sc=
ience imaging
was then based on OpenSUSE and Ubuntu Linux and OpenCL. From a simple naive=
 point of
view, I can not express deeply enough how excited I was when I saw, how fas=
t the
combination of CPUs and GPUs using OpenCL coding could be. What was done in=
 an expensive
and professional manner on expensive hardware was developed and tested on c=
heaper "gaming
riggs" and even on those platforms the boost was tremendous. But not with F=
reeBSD! All
Linux.

I think FreeBSD will find its niche in the embedded networking hardware mar=
ket as long as
it still has the faster network stack. But since the Linux folks started to=
 attack this
domain in a disgusting PR-ish way, I doubt that even this will last long. O=
r FreeBSD will
show its power with colourless databases.

One of the reasons why FreeBSD is still on top of the list of the OSes is t=
he fact of its
deep ZFS incorporation - as Matthew Dillon once said: it saved FreeBSD's as=
s. Well,
Dillon developed then HAMMER and showed once again, that the effords in the=
 BSD field are
spread all over the area and thinning out as times passes. For FreeBSD, the=
 day when Linux
will have its ZFS in-kernel will be devastating - I guess.

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