NVidia driver for amd64 / Page Attribute Table status?

John Baldwin jhb at freebsd.org
Mon Nov 7 13:36:03 PST 2005


On Sunday 06 November 2005 03:26 pm, Marcin Koziej wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have searched for some information about nVidia FreeBSD-amd64 driver
> and reasons why it is not availible, but the whole situation seems to be
> very mysterious.
>
> There are comments on nVidia forums from september by mr. Zander from
> nVidia:
> "There are technical problems with the FreeBSD/amd64 kernel that gate
> NVIDIA graphics driver support for this platform. NVIDIA has brought
> these problems up with FreeBSD developers and has been working with one
> of them to make reliable support for FreeBSD/amd64 technically possible,
> but unfortunately we can't provide a schedule for when this will be
> complete."
> (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=41545&page=2)
>
> Both the developer and the 'technical problems with FreeBSD' are kept
> secret...
> There are some clues in freebsd-current archive:
> "There are a few missing VM features that any high-performance graphics
> card driver would require for decent performance with PCI Express. John
> is working on adding those features - have patience."
>
> and
>
> "Actually I think that the feature we are talking about (PAT) is
> relevant to both amd64 and i386. Proper support for PAT is required for
> decent PCI Express performance, as I understand it."
>
> (http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2005-July/052740.html
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2005-July/052746.html)
>
> Is Page Attribute Table feature blocking nVidia drivers?
> What is the status of this feature then?
> Can someone informed enough shed some light on the story?
>
> Thanks for Your time,
> m.

It's not finished, no.  The WIP is being done in the p4_pat branch (though it 
has some crud in it now that probably isn't needed).  For more info about PAT 
and memory caching modes on x86 including MTRR's, etc. you can go download 
the vol 2 IA-32 arch PDF from developer.intel.com.  It's not a conspiracy, 
there are no black helicopters.

-- 
John Baldwin <jhb at FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve"  =  http://www.FreeBSD.org


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