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Date:      Sat, 1 Sep 2018 23:07:46 +0200
From:      CeDeROM <cederom@tlen.pl>
To:        galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu
Cc:        FreeBSD Questions Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD OpenCL/CUDA nVidia
Message-ID:  <CAFYkXjmZcus_eQ4bCfh6qSZaVvDhboej7BCVHQi6R9wtS4QiOg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <f3825f59-e565-133d-7828-15f297c9a437@kicp.uchicago.edu>
References:  <CAFYkXj=vMHsd6YXTEWhLvH7Xz4L6UwdfrFWqRj0rj4rS7UtE5Q@mail.gmail.com> <CABHD1wTN9gzQbfURNGqsqEv36QYQh60EZvNFzNO4c-X47G_sPw@mail.gmail.com> <CAFYkXjnBWjwUfiOFbqARrX9HNpJRWVEiSsHcC79Yd7Ec75QOBQ@mail.gmail.com> <SN1PR20MB210901AA55C18138EB2206B5800E0@SN1PR20MB2109.namprd20.prod.outlook.com> <CAFYkXjnynmiykYnENt5KDQs%2Bweo=V96na7OVHv5y0FiKAMNb=Q@mail.gmail.com> <f3825f59-e565-133d-7828-15f297c9a437@kicp.uchicago.edu>

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On Sat, Sep 1, 2018 at 7:23 PM Valeri Galtsev <galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> On 9/1/18 11:14 AM, CeDeROM wrote:
> > Great idea! Workplan and TODO list from FreeBSD to nVidia could be really
> > helpful and productive for both parties :-)
> >
> > Anyone taking care of X11/nVidia at this point?
> No, they have always been closed source, no details disclosing folts
>
> >
> > How about Open-Source NV driver? Any chance this one could support
> > CUDA/OpenCL?
>
> Stop dreaming, this will never happen, NVIDIA has long history of not
> disclosing details of their chips internals, and no sane programmer will
> waste time on the stuff from company that has longstanding attitude line
> NVIDIA's one.

Thank you Valeri for this bucket of cold water.

I remember long time ago, when for the first and last time I bought an
ATI card, then I had to rewrite some glue of the binary blob of the
x11 driver when Linux switched from 2.4.9 to 2.4.10 and its internal
API started to change on each kernel release.. that was the time and
reason I have stopped using both ATI and Linux (that I was using since
2.0.36 and I guess that was around FreeBSD 3 era)..

I was so amazed by nVidia support back then, and their FreeBSD driver
even supporting Linux emulation. I was buying and recommending only
nVidia. Things just worked out of the box "the BSD way". UNTIL TODAY
:-(

Looks like coins have flipped and today nVidia lags behind even
simplest cards.. with non-existent specifications and absolutely
minimal support for Open-Source :-(

How sad. World is going bad direction :-(

You know what, if nVidia does not care about its most geeky customers,
I heard OpenCL working on ATI/AMD + FreeBSD.. and I am using OpenCL on
Intel video on my macOS right now.. I will borrow a Radeon and see if
that works out of the box :-)

That would also explain why PlayStation4 that runs on FreeBSD uses
both AMD CPU and GPU. Maybe this is the way to go..

What is the current AMD/ATI support for Open-Source? Do they provide
full GPU specification as opposed to nVidia?

Best regards,
Tomek

-- 
CeDeROM, SQ7MHZ, http://www.tomek.cedro.info



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