From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jul 8 22:21:28 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0FC4F106567A for ; Tue, 8 Jul 2008 22:21:28 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from zbeeble@gmail.com) Received: from el-out-1112.google.com (el-out-1112.google.com [209.85.162.182]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BF9828FC0A for ; Tue, 8 Jul 2008 22:21:27 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from zbeeble@gmail.com) Received: by el-out-1112.google.com with SMTP id v27so412595ele.13 for ; Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:21:27 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to :subject:mime-version:content-type; bh=O3tijX6nEeJwanfDivY4p2n9lTzsZAhCe0AHwHcbZgQ=; b=Ho0w5ot47KOspQyJZvba5dR1WN99WPM8vyJjddO9FQmhw9cu02Z6vKjxEEWHgU1O5N nBfmX01xzAeQKYeNyFWt+4iF+InEwY/LpIxRPamL7CF2lJ617kfHAjO3dgk0Ufs0JHXS 2Rj4W2qi/fhWCseAaonTFNAmk9HIIqVg2TQLU= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type; b=mm3LMzEOT5J9HVgaEtMrTymY9SU3gQ2ASbRcf935EY92Qqs6hFbzcEuSg+Nc8JIWUH +TtKsRT6Zy9PEp5amCoXA4kGY1lI0qdcsQy0M7ERpDQeKV9dBGX6hTLqTDoLmU38R4CC 4jZrdpML6L6qL54XcEn0R+U/jE0HzkzzKlpQI= Received: by 10.151.114.6 with SMTP id r6mr11114531ybm.181.1215555687133; Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:21:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.150.137.11 with HTTP; Tue, 8 Jul 2008 15:21:27 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <5f67a8c40807081521o1f32660ak392672da61e490fd@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 18:21:27 -0400 From: "Zaphod Beeblebrox" To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Subject: Glaring 64 bit omission X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:21:28 -0000 I was just following up to a post in the forms nvidia supports regarding the graphics cards and FreeBSD when it struck me... Possibly one of the most important glaring omissions to the current FreeBSD platform and it's associated desktop projects is the lack of an nvidia 3D driver. Now I do follow the various forums and mailing lists sufficiently to be quite aware of the requests that nvidia has made for the FreeBSD kernel, the latest reported status on these items and the discussions about these items. I am even somewhat familliar with the efforts for open source drivers on both nvidia (barely supporting 2D at this point) and 3D drivers on other types of hardware (Intel and AMD) In the other forum, I commented that in all my reading, I had not come across someone saying that either a) the nvidia requests seemed unneccary or even b) that the nvidia requests served only the interests of nvida or some narrow (possibly bad) design of hardware. Now... the kernel modifications seem rather major to my untrained eye... something that seems highly unlikely to be considered for MFC. That being the case, it's already too late to consider nvidia cards working on AMD-64 in 7.x. _That_ being said, it seems that these kernel items should be on a priority list for 8.0 (and possibly even delaying 8.0 until we can achieve them so that 64bit nvidia support (arriving in -STABLE) is not delayed another year or two). Although AMD64 is a new platform, it was a platform born out of desperation. There's good evidence for this position in the amount of sheer crow Intel had to consume by supporting the architecture. I multi-boot my laptop to take advantage of it's DUAL-8800M video cards, but I also spend much of my time in amd64 mode because I find i386 too restrictive (for ZFS, for application size, for amount of supported RAM, etc.). In fact, running ZFS in 32 bit mode seems to run the system out of resources required to run 3D application (although there is talk on the FreeBSD lists that future ZFS patches may mitigate this behaviour --- but the fact seems to remain that both ZFS and nvidia require gobs of kernel resources --- which in turn both point to 64 bit OS).