From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Wed Dec 13 18:50:02 2017 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 97EF9E83323 for ; Wed, 13 Dec 2017 18:50:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu) Received: from cosmo.uchicago.edu (cosmo.uchicago.edu [128.135.20.71]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 617217DB16 for ; Wed, 13 Dec 2017 18:50:01 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu) Received: by cosmo.uchicago.edu (Postfix, from userid 48) id 42007CB8D14; Wed, 13 Dec 2017 12:32:21 -0600 (CST) Received: from 128.135.52.6 (SquirrelMail authenticated user valeri) by cosmo.uchicago.edu with HTTP; Wed, 13 Dec 2017 12:32:21 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <22836.128.135.52.6.1513189941.squirrel@cosmo.uchicago.edu> Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2017 12:32:21 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: CUDA under FreeBSD From: "Valeri Galtsev" To: "FreeBSD" Reply-To: galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.8-5.el5.centos.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Importance: Normal References: <34331.107.77.207.211.1512384505.squirrel@cosmo.uchicago.edu> <0545699d-9df7-ced2-4990-27e3ecb8e531@ShaneWare.Biz> In-Reply-To: X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.25 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2017 18:50:02 -0000 On Tue, December 5, 2017 4:04 am, Carmel NY wrote: > On Tuesday, December 5, 2017 2:53 AM, Shane Ambler stated: >> On 04/12/2017 21:19, galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu wrote: >> > On Mon, December 4, 2017 4:24 am, Carmel NY wrote: >> >> Out of morbid curiosity, I was wondering if anyone could tell me the real reason that Nvidia does not support CUDA under >> > >> > Arrogance would be my guess. >> The morbid part is that they give us the linux libcuda, so we should be able to >> run linux binaries that use cuda, just not native apps. >> >> FreeBSD? Also, what are the realistic expectations for it getting supported shortly? >> > >> > Zero is my estimate. The way to let one's steam about them is just not >> > to buy ther hardware. Their attitude to open sourse and unwillingness to disclose details of their hardware was always much worse than that of their competitors (ATI/AMD, matrox...). >> > >> > This is just my opinion based on my subjective observations. > > Personally, I have always considered Nvidia products to be superior. Well, this is just your subjective opinion opposing my subjective opinion. With all due respect. I have seen nvidia chips giving artifacts (probably after mild overheat, really just mild). I can not compare some product (to consider it superior to another) if I can not use that product fully under variety of systems _I_ use. And the last is true about nvidia video chips. As opposed to variety of their competitors. At some point Apple agreed with me (well, of course independent on me made up their opinion ;-). There were infamous MacBook Pro 15 inch made by Apple somewhere around 2012. These contained discrete video chip by NVIDIA (in addition to integrated on intel CPU substrate... I'm lying, it was inside CPU case, but etched on different substrate...). Anyway, there was some crap about that NVIDIA chip, so Apple didn't manage to make later releases of MacOS work with later hardware and with that 2012 MacBook Pro, kernel just crashed inside NVIDIA kernel module. Apple even had (really short lived) program of replacing that hardware, realizing that this is just crap. Program closed very quickly, so only small portion of bad hardware was actually replaced. My guess is: nvidia decided not to carry their side of financial losses. After which Apple made good IMHO decision, and switched over to AMD (which are actually bought out by AMD well known ATI). Incidentally, way back someone made excellent argument when comparing ATI with NVIDIA. Here it is: NVIDIA releases new drivers (or driver updates) almost monthly. ATI takes about half a year to release driver. From which the conclusion can be made (which I fully agree with) that ATI thoroughly tests and debugs drivers before releasing them (and doesn't need to fix crap in the driver soon after release). Not true about NVIDIA, whose drivers quite likely are much buggier. Anyway, just my observations, potentially a bit biased by the fact that NVIDIA discloses much less about chip internals than, say, ATI (hence the ability or lack of such by open source driver developers to write decent open source drivers. > >> I'm sure on an episode of bsdnow, they mentioned asking an nvidia dev at >> one of the conferences and they said there shouldn't be any technical reason, it just isn't enabled in the build and they would look into it. Still hasn't helped any. > Which just confirms that individual developer is likely less arrogant than a company as a whole. Well, all I said is just my subjective opinion based on my (by no means thorough) observations. Valeri > Interesting. I was not aware of that. It would seem to me that there should be more of an > concerted effort to get this issue resolved. > > -- > Carmel > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++