CUDA under FreeBSD

[blubee blubeeme]

On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 2:32 AM, Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>
wrote:

> On Tue, December 5, 2017 4:04 am, Carmel NY wrote:
> > On Tuesday, December 5, 2017 2:53 AM, Shane Ambler stated:
> >> On 04/12/2017 21:19, galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu wrote:
> >> > On Mon, December 4, 2017 4:24 am, Carmel NY wrote:
> >> >> Out of morbid curiosity, I was wondering if anyone could tell me the
> real reason that Nvidia does not support CUDA under
> >> >
> >> > Arrogance would be my guess.
> >> The morbid part is that they give us the linux libcuda, so we should be
> able to
> >> run linux binaries that use cuda, just not native apps.
> >> >> FreeBSD? Also, what are the realistic expectations for it getting
> supported shortly?
> >> >
> >> > Zero is my estimate. The way to let one's steam about them is just
> not
> >> > to buy ther hardware. Their attitude to open sourse and unwillingness
> to disclose details of their hardware was always much worse than that
> of their competitors (ATI/AMD, matrox...).
> >> >
> >> > This is just my opinion based on my subjective observations.
> >
> > Personally, I have always considered Nvidia products to be superior.
>
> Well, this is just your subjective opinion opposing my subjective opinion.
> With all due respect.
>
> I have seen nvidia chips giving artifacts (probably after mild overheat,
> really just mild). I can not compare some product (to consider it superior
> to another) if I can not use that product fully under variety of systems
> _I_ use. And the last is true about nvidia video chips. As opposed to
> variety of their competitors.
>
> At some point Apple agreed with me (well, of course independent on me made
> up their opinion ;-). There were infamous MacBook Pro 15 inch made by
> Apple somewhere around 2012. These contained discrete video chip by NVIDIA
> (in addition to integrated on intel CPU substrate... I'm lying, it was
> inside CPU case, but etched on different substrate...). Anyway, there was
> some crap about that NVIDIA chip, so Apple didn't manage to make later
> releases of MacOS work with later hardware and with that 2012 MacBook Pro,
> kernel just crashed inside NVIDIA kernel module. Apple even had (really
> short lived) program of replacing that hardware, realizing that this is
> just crap. Program closed very quickly, so only small portion of bad
> hardware was actually replaced. My guess is: nvidia decided not to carry
> their side of financial losses. After which Apple made good IMHO decision,
> and switched over to AMD (which are actually bought out by AMD well known
> ATI). Incidentally, way back someone made excellent argument when
> comparing ATI with NVIDIA. Here it is: NVIDIA releases new drivers (or
> driver updates) almost monthly. ATI takes about half a year to release
> driver. From which the conclusion can be made (which I fully agree with)
> that ATI thoroughly tests and debugs drivers before releasing them (and
> doesn't need to fix crap in the driver soon after release). Not true about
> NVIDIA, whose drivers quite likely are much buggier.
>
> Anyway, just my observations, potentially a bit biased by the fact that
> NVIDIA discloses much less about chip internals than, say, ATI (hence the
> ability or lack of such by open source driver developers to write decent
> open source drivers.
>
> >
> >> I'm sure on an episode of bsdnow, they mentioned asking an nvidia dev
> at
> >> one of the conferences and they said there shouldn't be any technical
> reason, it just isn't enabled in the build and they would look into it.
> Still hasn't helped any.
> >
>
> Which just confirms that individual developer is likely less arrogant than
> a company as a whole.
>
> Well, all I said is just my subjective opinion based on my (by no means
> thorough) observations.
>
> Valeri
>
> > Interesting. I was not aware of that. It would seem to me that there
> should be more of an
> > concerted effort to get this issue resolved.
> >
> > --
> > Carmel
> >
>
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Valeri Galtsev
> Sr System Administrator
> Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
> Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
> University of Chicago
> Phone: 773-702-4247
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>
>
>
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Here's a thorough overview of the history of ATI/AMD vs NVIDIA it's a three
part but very good, for those who want to know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j6TiSdKT0A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd1bp9eSfwo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-YM_3YBm0