Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 10:45:09 +0000 From: Alexander Best <arundel@freebsd.org> To: Christopher =?iso-8859-15?Q?Bergstr=F6m?= <cbergstrom@pathscale.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: gpu support for modern systems Message-ID: <20110625104509.GA87358@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <BANLkTim=dgsCHAJAzBvxkpYjTFJA7Rt7GA@mail.gmail.com> References: <20110622234336.GA94654@freebsd.org> <BANLkTim=dgsCHAJAzBvxkpYjTFJA7Rt7GA@mail.gmail.com>
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On Thu Jun 23 11, Christopher Bergström wrote: > On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 6:43 AM, Alexander Best <arundel@freebsd.org> wrote: > > hi there, > > > > modern systems with their suffisticated gpus provide quite a potential for > > moving some of the workload from cpu to gpu. for certain stuff gpus are much > > faster than cpus, like number crunching or encoding/decoding multimedia > > contents. > > > > anybody who is using mplayer(1) in combination with nvidia cards and vdpau has > > probably experienced how much faster and less cpu intensive things can work out > > when decoding HD video stuff e.g. > > > > since opencl/cuda isn't available under freebsd, it doesn't seem possible to > > somehow hook the nvidia gpu into the every day freebsd workload that easily. > > PathScale has HMPP and partial CUDA support on FreeBSD now. Some > caveats to this > > 1) Non-free (We could possibly make the tools free for FreeBSD > community, but I'd have to get approval for it) > 2) CUDA support isn't complete (Basic core is there and HMPP C/Fortran works) > 3) Tesla 20xx series only > > We offer real support for FreeBSD and it's not using any linux emulator hacks. > > Let me know if anyone is interested. (If we get enough positive > feedback I'll pursue some resolution to #1) i'd really love to see this stuff being made available to the community. i think this could pose a huge advantage to all kinds of audiences: home users, servers people, etc. basically every modern computer comes with a gpu that performs much better at certain tasks than the installed CPU. not making use of the gpu is a huge waste of ressources. i think microsoft had a video on their channel 9 platform demonstrating the huge advantages that one can get when offloading certain tasks onto the gpu. just think of gimp being able to perform 10 times faster! ..or being able to compile world 10 times faster...or...or... ;) cheers. alex > > ./C
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