x11/nvidia-driver-340 and OpenCL

[Scott Bennett]

Jan Beich <jbeich at vfemail.net> wrote:

     Thanks for taking the time to respond.

> Scott Bennett <bennett at sdf.org> writes:
>
> >      My current system has a pair of 10-year-old Radeon HD 3870x2 cards
> > interconnected by a Crossfire cable.  Those cards support OpenGL 4, but
> > do not support OpenCL, unfortunately.  My previous computer, now sitting
> > unused in a corner, has an EVGA GeForce 210 card in it that supports only
> > OpenGL 3.1, according to the box it came in, but does support OpenCL,
> > though it doesn't say up to which version of OpenCL.  The modern
> > x11/nvidia-driver does not support this older card, but
> > x11/nvidia-driver-340 does support it.  I could pull one of the Radeon
> > cards, disconnecting the unsupported-by-X.org Crossfire cable, and
> > replace the card with the EVGA card if the older driver it requires
> > supports OpenCL on it.  Can anyone tell me whether it does?  If so, I
> > would like to leave the monitor connected to the remaining Radeon card
> > and use the Nvidia-based EVGA card just for OpenCL.  I would rather not
> > spend money on a newer and more powerful card from either company just
> > to familiarize myself with OpenCL, and the EVGA ought to be good enough
> > for that purpose if the driver will support it.
> >      Thanks in advance for any information on this!
>
> NVIDIA seems to implement OpenCL via CUDA runtime but both are
> missing[1] in the FreeBSD driver. CUDA is known to work via 32bit
> linuxulator but not 64bit one (bug 206711). OpenCL may work as well
> after extracting under /compat/linux at least nvidia.icd,
> libnvidia-opencl.so.1 and dependencies from Linux version of the driver.
>
> --
> [1] NVIDIA driver for FreeBSD is probably in maintenance-only mode given new
>     features like DRM KMS or Vulkan are also missing for more than a year.
>     Try comparing NVIDIA_Changelog or files installed by Linux and FreeBSD
>     version of the driver to get an insight.

     Thank you very much for that information, Jan.  I will take a look at
that, but if the situation is that chancy and would mean being stuck with
32-bit emulation, it probably wouldn't be my best option after all.
     Do you know whether a 64-bit driver (for later Nvidia cards, of course)
is in the works with up-to-date features?  Or would I do better by buying a
more recent Radeon card?


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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