From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jul 3 09:40:16 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B151F16A412 for ; Mon, 3 Jul 2006 09:40:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [209.31.154.42]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1404243D48 for ; Mon, 3 Jul 2006 09:40:16 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [209.31.154.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C60E46B28; Mon, 3 Jul 2006 05:40:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006 10:40:15 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Sam Smith In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20060703103420.B26325@fledge.watson.org> References: <20060629111231.GA692@wolf.nvidia.com> <20060702114950.bf39e312.mmendez@energyhq.be> <1151877095.1085.19.camel@genius.i.cz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Michal Mertl , Christian Zander Subject: Re: NVIDIA FreeBSD kernel feature requests 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: Mon, 03 Jul 2006 09:40:16 -0000 On Sun, 2 Jul 2006, Sam Smith wrote: > On Sun, 2 Jul 2006, Michal Mertl wrote: >> And - again - it will probably take a couple of very skilled >> programmers' years' time to write good driver from scratch. > > It took someone far less than that > http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/pci/if_nfe.c > http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=nfe&sektion=4 > > Nvidia don't want to give out docs. > > That's their commercial decision - as a result, if you their cards, you may > end up with a particularly expensive paperweight the day they decide you > need to buy a new card for your new version of freebsd which has different > internals; or someone finds bugs in their drivers that they wont fix. it's > not like there aren't plenty of other vendors who are more willing to help > the developers with documentation in an open manner. As I've also pointed out privately, but figure the list might benefit from -- this is a discussion of NVIDIA's video hardware, not network hardware, and the differences are significant: Producing a device driver for a network interface is a pretty casual activity, since network interfaces are often just glorified hardware fifos, and there is relatively little that distinguishes most low-end cards on the market. Producing a driver for a GPU card, especially one that possibly converts from GL-foo to foo appropriate to program and feed an ASIC on a video card, is quite different matter entirely. I'm all for open source drivers, and would also encourage NVIDIA to continue to reconsider their closed source driver approach where it makes sense (especially for the network interfaces). However, I think that we shouldn't conflate these two cases rhetorically, as there are orders of magnitude complexity (and intellectual property) differences. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge