Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 23:43:36 +0000 From: Alexander Best <arundel@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: gpu support for modern systems Message-ID: <20110622234336.GA94654@freebsd.org>
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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. however the newer generations of CPUs, like intel sandybridge include hardwired gpus (quick sync?) and i guess intel provides an open api for that. it would be really great to do something like: `kldload intel_gpu.ko` ...and have the kernel offload certain computations to the gpu. maybe, with the gpu serving as a second "cpu", it would be even possible to ensure 100% uptime with loading a copy of the kernel to the gpu, pointing the instruction pointer at it, loading a new kernel version onto the cpu and switching to the new kernel. :) cheers. alex ps: sorry for not being that accurate here and there, just reading up on sandybridge cpus and the z68 chipset, because i'm in the middle of upgrading my box. ;)
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