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 lack in the necessary words. I'm too young to talk with the old guys from the great time of X11 (Leffler) or BSD (McKusick) and all the pioneer work done in that time, but the great spirit seems to be lost due to "companies" and this golden-valve-people attitude of money, money, money. Sorry about the last sentence, as i said, philosphie in a depressive mood can be devastating. Well ... regards, Oliver
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