FreeBSD, GPGPU and OpenCL/CUDA

[Pieter de Goeje]

On Monday 16 August 2010 23:00:52 Hartmann, O. wrote:
>   On 08/16/10 21:13, Pieter de Goeje wrote:
> > On Monday 16 August 2010 16:50:01 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..
> >
> > So did we for the nvidia driver on amd64.
> >
> > I'm not saying that we will be successful, I'm just saying if they're not
> > even aware of this need that it will never happen.
> >
> > - Pieter
>
> I think they are aware, but the number of users is very, very low. Since
> modern 3D accerlerated and GPGPU capable drivers are developed
> dominantly under Linux, BSDs lack in modern
> architectures like KMS necessary running those modern drivers, so in
> case of the 64Bit video drivers it could be more a lack in the
> underlying technical infrastructure than the low number of users. But I
> do not know.
>
> Oliver

The amd64 driver was an illustration of something where raising awareness or 
whatever you might call it actually helped IMHO.

Unfortunately this is a chicken-and-egg problem. No HPC users means no demand 
means no incentive to do something about it means no HPC users ad infinitum. 
But I'm sure you're already knew that.

- Pieter