From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Aug 16 20:51:25 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4D37F10656AA for ; Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:51:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ohartman@mail.zedat.fu-berlin.de) Received: from outpost1.zedat.fu-berlin.de (outpost1.zedat.fu-berlin.de [130.133.4.66]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 05C068FC1C for ; Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:51:24 +0000 (UTC) Received: from inpost2.zedat.fu-berlin.de ([130.133.4.69]) by outpost1.zedat.fu-berlin.de (Exim 4.69) with esmtp (envelope-from ) id <1Ol6eN-0008C2-Pu>; Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:51:19 +0200 Received: from pd9e024f1.dip.t-dialin.net ([217.224.36.241] helo=munin.geoinf.fu-berlin.de) by inpost2.zedat.fu-berlin.de (Exim 4.69) with esmtpsa (envelope-from ) id <1Ol6eN-0001Cm-Ko>; Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:51:19 +0200 Message-ID: <4C69A4C3.5080801@mail.zedat.fu-berlin.de> Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:51:15 +0200 From: "Hartmann, O." User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD amd64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100812 Thunderbird/3.1.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Anton Shterenlikht References: <4C666786.6000205@mail.zedat.fu-berlin.de> <20100816141324.7de6d7b4@ukr.net> <20100816134713.66411ai1w435q5wh@webmail.xroff.net> <201008161618.35076.pieter@degoeje.nl> <20100816173333.4a1bba57@ukr.net> <20100816145001.GA90619@mech-cluster241.men.bris.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <20100816145001.GA90619@mech-cluster241.men.bris.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Originating-IP: 217.224.36.241 Cc: Ivan Klymenko , Pieter de Goeje , emorras@xroff.net, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD, GPGPU and OpenCL/CUDA X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:51:25 -0000 On 08/16/10 16:50, Anton Shterenlikht wrote: > On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 05:33:33PM +0300, Ivan Klymenko wrote: >>> I think it might be worthwhile to contact nVidia directly about this. >>> To raise awareness that there are people using FreeBSD for HPC and >>> that they very much would like to see OpenCL/CUDA supported. > how is this different from getting e.g. native Flash or Matlab on FBSD? > We've been trying to "raise awareness" for years.. > I do not know any scientific group using FreeBSD anymore. Most of those groups used FreeBSD changed to Linux (mostly Redhat, some Ubuntu). Watching Phoronix and their benchmarks speaks clear what OS is the first choice. Well, I like the staright forward, centralised organization and the academic heritage of the BSDs and I would miss ZFS. The essence is: there is no serious reason to convince compiler vendors or vendors of 3D graphics chips of supporting FreeBSD for a specific purpose if there is no need -statistically. AMD/ATi in conjunction with OpenCL/LLVM was a great hope since the GPU vendor offered 3D specs of their chips to opensource vendors. But on the other hand nVidia seems to be much better supported by Gallium3D these days although they haven't offered internal 3d specs. I'm confused and at the end I have to decide. At the moment the comunity of astronomers and astrophysicist is sharing several very interesting N-body simulation code based on CUDA (open source) but users and maybe rare scientists still using FreeBSD are excluded from using those benefits.