From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jun 23 02:27:52 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A519106564A for ; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:27:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mv@thebeastie.org) Received: from p4.roq.com (ns1.ecoms.com [207.44.130.137]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1C7EC8FC18 for ; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:27:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mv@thebeastie.org) Received: from p4.roq.com (localhost.roq.com [127.0.0.1]) by p4.roq.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B3A554C4F9 for ; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:59:36 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mail.jumbuck.com (p82.jumbuck.com [206.112.99.82]) by p4.roq.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7EEAD4C377 for ; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:59:36 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mail.jumbuck.com (mail.jumbuck.com [206.112.99.82]) by mail.jumbuck.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B534F1ACBCDE; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:58:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from beaste5.jumbuck.com (ppp198-18.static.internode.on.net [59.167.198.18]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mail.jumbuck.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 072971ACBCD4; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:58:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from beaste5.jumbuck.com (beast5 [192.168.46.105]) by beaste5.jumbuck.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A2433209D2CA; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:58:55 +1000 (EST) Received: from [192.168.46.121] (unknown [192.168.46.121]) by beaste5.jumbuck.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7ED50209D2C9; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:58:55 +1000 (EST) Message-ID: <485F035D.9080403@thebeastie.org> Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:58:53 +1000 From: Michael Vince User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (Windows/20080421) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Unga References: <285746.27928.qm@web57009.mail.re3.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <285746.27928.qm@web57009.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV using ClamSMTP Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Supercomputing with FreeBSD? X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:27:52 -0000 Yes I remember when Nvidia posted that post so they could better support their hardware on FreeBSD, but at least a few FreeBSD developers slammed the Nvidia poster for reasons that appeared to me to be quite unreasonable. While I have not tracked what came out of all that I assumed very little. It reminds me of when OpenBSD got a huge financial contribution to do a few projects for DARPA that would of helped the OpenBSD OS in a bunch of security and related features, but the leader of OpenBSD was arguably 'immature' about where the money was coming from and thus lost the financial contribution, due to some comments he made publicly. These things happen on open projects like these, in theory you will always have people who hate larger bodies of power and I guess its OK for them to voice their opinions, but there should be some good upper leader ship to take advantage of these opportunities, ideally. Mike Unga wrote: > Hi all supercomputing interested guys and gals > > You may have seen this: > 1. University of Antwerp makes 4000EUR NVIDIA > supercomputer > (http://www.dvhardware.net/article27538.html) > > 2. FASTRA GPU SuperPC > (http://fastra.ua.ac.be/en/index.html) > > > I would like to first quote following from > http://fastra.ua.ac.be/en/specs.html : > > "Software overview > ------------------ > > We selected Windows XP-64 as the operating system for > FASTRA. There were three reasons for choosing this > platform: first, we needed a 64-bit operating system, > in order to utilize 8GB of RAM. Second, we expected > fewer driver issues on Windows compared to Linux. > Third, within the Windows product line, Windows Vista > is not yet supported by the NVIDIA GPU Computing > platform, leaving Windows XP as the only choice. For > development, we use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. The > core functionality for our CPU code is written in C++ > (Visual C++), while MATLAB is often used as a > front-end for rapid prototyping. All GPU code is > developed using the NVIDIA CUDA framework > (http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html), a > C-like programming language that allows for efficient > programming of the NVIDIA GPUs." > > This opportunity make it available to FreeBSD users > has many great benefits. We can use FreeBSD, AMD64 and > Nvidia combination at an affordable price for great > many computational intensive tasks such as compilation > (FreeBSD has a parallel make), rendering, encoding, > etc. Of course such supercomputational-ready software > should be available first. But the question is, is the > FreeBSD infrastructurally ready for that? > > FreeBSD runs on amd64. But we have following issues: > 1. Nvidia doesn't release a driver for amd64. > > 2. The NVIDIA CUDA framework > (http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html), is not > available for FreeBSD, but it is available for Linux > and Mac OSX. So porting CUDA to FreeBSD may not be a > big issue. > > To resolve the above two issues: > 1. FreeBSD should proactively address following > issues: > - > http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2006-June/016995.html > - http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests > > I don't understand why the the FreeBSD project does > not organize a Google SoC style project to address the > above issues, invite few developers to join the > project, either use FreeBSD donated funds or seeks > fresh funds for the project (AMD and Nvidia will sure > donate if requested as they are direct beneficiaries). > The project could be at least to be targeted to commit > for upcoming FreeBSD 8.0. I would like to understand > why organize such a project is very difficult and what > are the issues regarding that. > > 2. Once above point 1. is fixed, I'm sure the Nvidia > will port the CUDA framework to FreeBSD and release a > driver for amd64. If not FreeBSD project/foundation > can request from Nvidia. > > Kind regards > Unga > > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-chat@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-chat > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-chat-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >