Re: PathScale EKO Path 5 not for FreeBSD anymore?
I've been talking to others and it seems that several of us are convinced that BSD is back on the uptake, so I wouldn't be so quick to mark its demise. :-) ___ freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: PathScale EKO Path 5 not for FreeBSD anymore?
On 20/02/2013 13:00, freebsd-current-requ...@freebsd.org wrote: Gathering informations from many places - as it is with "WHICH PROFESSIONAL COMPILER WORKS ON FREEBSD WITH PROFESSIONAL HIGH PERFORMANCE MATH LIBS" is horrible and time consuming. try it on Google with the tag "Linux" makes you happy within seconds. So true...I found that when the first search for a FreeBSD thing doesn't yield results, I search for Linux and then either check if the results work here or, having some well known name, look for alternatives. -- Twoje radio ___ freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: PathScale EKO Path 5 not for FreeBSD anymore?
Am 02/20/13 10:09, schrieb Anton Shterenlikht: > Oliver > > I try to use FreeBSD for day-to-day numerical > work, as far as possible. I have to complement > it with linux cluster systems, largely due to > a range of compilers available there. > > Anyway, keep me posted if you get anywhere with this. > > Anton Hello Anton. The good German wine was talking yesterday, I guess. On PathScales EKOPath 4 website, FreeBSD and OpenSOLARIS are still mentioned and its HMPP, not OpenACC, that is used inline code. I have first to apologize for the depressive mood I spread around. It is EKOPath 5 BETA (webpage) that doesn't mention FreeBSD as supported platform - as one can easily see and watch at the intro page right bottom corner. The "community" of FreeBSD systems is decreasing from year to year and as David Chisnall reported in a reply on my posting, it seems to be a "mindshare" thing. Too many people are talking about "business" - business isn't the motivator, science is and this may be a special view of my country. BSD was developed at Berkeley in a very scientific manner and therefore it is a very strong "logical" system - apart from the crap Lnux started with. I think it is unwise to talk about philosphy at this moment. The fact is, that I'm the only one in my department that is using FreeBSD on two remaining servers (one is a small storage server) and my personal lab workstation - my private systems are all FreeBSD, but that is not the matter here. The equipment I bought when we had to spend money on the project's funding is quite "impressive" for a under the desk workstation - I guess. We also had the chance to purchase a Dell Precision 7500 workstation with a TESLA 2075 board and two 6-core Westmere CPUs at 2,6 GHz with 96 GB RAM - for modelling and rendering purposes (sometimes our scientific work in the planetology field requires to do PR for funding, so we render also ...). Having FreeBSD in the first place on that box everything worked quite well, since the drivers were applicable to the provided hardware, even the TESLA card was accepted by the nVidia BLOB. But that's it. We swapped to Suse Linux since the developer working on that system required OpenCL thriving the GPU for large DTM rendering. Our cluster system (Rocks) is pure Linux. We have a lot of Dell stuff around here, equipted with expensive iDRAC modules. They're supposed to get accessed via JAVA. From FreeBSD/Firefox, I can not start the console due to a JAVA error. Dell rejects support, since FreeBSD isn't supported. Yes, and this is the meaning of platform indepenedency ... It is also a political thing. Another thing, that seems unlogical is the MIT/BSD/CDDL versus GPLv3 licensing issue. FreeBSD, as the other *BSDs, are supposed to have the most "advanced" licensing model in terms of academic freedom and even for companies benefit from such a free licensing model. GPLv3 is curcified as the evil license and even companies which have an interest protecting their code should look at the BSD systems - but the fact is: Linux all over the place. What is wrong with this picture? The opinion shared within THIS community or a real blindness? Funding companies or professional developers for developing KMS, GEM and other stuff is one thing. Why is there no effort to fund students working on their Diploma Thesis or Dissertation with regards to develop methods, code or functionality to FreeBSD in a "wide and open manner", so that it can be used platform independend? It is just an idea and it is a question that the FreeBSD Foundation has to answer and to decide on. The other very bad thing is the information I have to gather. Somehow I feel lost when looking for software for my work, even it is very popular. Gathering informations from many places - as it is with "WHICH PROFESSIONAL COMPILER WORKS ON FREEBSD WITH PROFESSIONAL HIGH PERFORMANCE MATH LIBS" is horrible and time consuming. try it on Google with the tag "Linux" makes you happy within seconds. And back to our case. For instance, meshalb is a very powerful tool used by many people working with point cloud data. Since more than half a year that port is broken on FreeBSD and that drove to scientists away from my FreeBSD installation to Linux - where is works perfectly - magically. Well, we have now devel/freeocl in the ports to provide a bit OpenCL stuff on FreeBSD - but on the CPU, not the GPU. My next attempt is to provide a port of devel/pocl, which isn't fit for FreeBSD in version 0.7 as there is a typo regarding amd64 and the x86_64 terminology, but those guys from Finnlandia are very, very nice and also PRO(!) freeBSd, so they told me that there is alsready a patch in the GIT. I haven't had the time to look at this since I'm consumed due to writing my thesis at the moment, but THERE IS STUFF of interest, but if it is a lonely-hunter-work only and the interest of the community is so low on such stuff even of the professional people hired to code for FreeBSD, then ... well, I lac
Re: PathScale EKO Path 5 not for FreeBSD anymore?
I forwarded this thread to Christopher Bergstöm and got this reply: > > FreeBSD simply isn't a scientific computing platform - There isn't any market > demand, it's not designed for it, many of the tools commonly used aren't > available and the amount of work to change that is significant. (I don't > just mean technical, but also mindshare for those in the technical computing > field) > > However, we haven't dropped support for it > http://c591116.r16.cf2.rackcdn.com/enzo/nightly/FreeBSD/enzo-2013-02-19-installer.run > > There's a few GPGPU related bugs we'd have to fix for it to work for you, but > those are pretty small and wouldn't take more than a few days. > > We made some big changes in EKOPath 5/ENZO and development is closed for now. > We're trying to figure out a strategy which will have an impact and be > win/win for everyone. > > Apologies if I may have dropped the ball on communication. I'm not > subscribed to -current or -performance and please cc me on any replies. > > ./C A few additional comments: - FreeBSD libm really needs to get the missing C99 functions committed. We have good versions of these written now (with better accuracy than several competing operating systems that are successful scientific computing platforms), but they need committing. Of the 31 test failures in the libc++ test suite (which covers most of C++11) that I see currently, 18 are due to missing C99 functionality. Most of the missing functions are implemented, but committing them was held up by style nits in the source code. This is just embarrassing. - GPU support has been quite poor on FreeBSD, and this has a knock-on effect on GPGPU. It's a mistake to think of GPUs as just things gamers need and therefore not too important for FreeBSD - they're currently the best performance-per-dollar accelerators available on the market and so are of interest in a number of markets. If you or your company is using FreeBSD and wants to do GPGPU things, then make sure that AMD, Intel, and nVidia all know, and ideally let Qualcomm and ARM know too. The FreeBSD Foundation has funded work on KMS, GEM and TTM, and so open source driver support is improving. If you're willing to fund some more of this work, then please get in touch with the Foundation. Most of the companies in this space don't care what we say, they care what their customers (and potential customers) say. They won't support FreeBSD if there's no (perceived) demand, so it's important to make sure that they're aware of the demand. - A big part of the problem is mindshare. Linux is seen as the thing to use on clusters and supercomputers, even when it isn't the best tool for the job. It's hard to contradict this view when there aren't any (public) large-scale deployments of FreeBSD for scientific computing. If you have one that you're willing to talk about, please contact the Foundation and let them know. David ___ freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: PathScale EKO Path 5 not for FreeBSD anymore?
Oliver I try to use FreeBSD for day-to-day numerical work, as far as possible. I have to complement it with linux cluster systems, largely due to a range of compilers available there. Anyway, keep me posted if you get anywhere with this. Anton ___ freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
PathScale EKO Path 5 not for FreeBSD anymore?
A while ago - approximately three years from now, i was looking for a GPGPU capable solution for usage on FreeBSD and I stepped into the compilers from PathScale which are supposed to handle OpenACC (like OpenMP #pragma omp, but in this case #pragma openacc instead). Well, there was hope since PathScale obviously had a FreeBSD commercial solution. It was in BETA stage that time, I applied for getting a testing copy, but never got an answer, even having had contact to Christopher Bergström, CTO at PathScale. Looking today at Phoronix, (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=pathscale_ekopath_5beta&num=1), I read this benchmarking and followed the links which say that PathScale opensourced their compiler suite a while ago (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=pathscale_ekopath4_open&num=1) I was curious and looked at PathScales website where I found three years ago also FreeBSD mentioned as a supported platform, but see foryourself, what supported platforms today mentioned there: http://www.pathscale.com/ekopath-compiler-suite Well, at the end, this means there is simply no binary or package that could be installed easily for scientists interested in that compiler. I do not know whether there are motivations to produce a FreeBSD 10/9 compatible package from the newly emitted PathScale EKO Patch 5 Beta compiler sources, which are available at github: https://github.com/path64/compiler Well, the official website of PathScale doens't mention FreeBSD anymore and this must have a reason why they droped support or any intention to support that OS. From the perspective of a "user", I'm the lonely "idiot" within kilometres using FreeBSD for my day-to-day scientifice work and sacrifice myself not having GPGPU capabilities. Something is really going into the wrong direction here. I'm very interested in the reasoning why PathScale droped FreeBSD and I guess it would be nice to reveal the reasons. Am I blind or is this again another erosion process of an operating system usefull even for scientific purposes? Well, I'm aware that my posting triggers again a lot of emotional discussions (I guess), since it did in the past. I try to evaluate the situation from the perspective of a "user", not someone who needs to be a Os engineer to use an OS. It is a kind of deep running frustration to see how the next great compiler suite for scientific purpose is simply vanishing - as it did with the NAG compilers which were offered for freeBSD as well as other OSs at the end of 1990s. Now there is no offering anymore. Regards, Oliver signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
