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ati gpu folding in linux

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IAmMoen

Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2006
Location
Falcon Heights, MN
Ok so I have begun folding again and I want to get my gpu in on the fun (ati3870). Issue is that from what I have found through searching it would seem that I would have to have a Nvidia card to gpu fold in linux. Is this accurate or could someone point me in the direction to get this setup (gotta keep that darn magazine team where it belongs).
 
There is a ATI wrapper in development by the same person who created the NV wrapper. He stated recently that it is nearly complete. Currently the only option for ATI is to run it in windows,

Well one thing that has kept me from releasing it was I was in a disucssion with the Wine guys about adding back in support for native .so's by default in Wine. It use to be supported out of the box but they removed it, and I'm trying to get them to put ti back in, then there would be no need for wrappers. Simple open winecfg make 1 or 2 changes and you are good. Their argument is that hardly any programs use this, and not all libraries are the same in linux vs windows. They think it's not worth it, I think it is.
 
Yes, please. I have 30 imacs with Ati 2400's. I'm building an image for them this week, and I'd like them to fold using same high performance client whether they are booted in Windows XP or OSX. Without a way to run gpu2 in OSX, I'm stuck with using the uniprocessor client... or with just making them fold in windows only with gpu2 or smp. And sadly this hardware just won't make the deadlines with the native smp mac client and a separate windows gpu or smp client because of the whole dual-booting/no-telling-how-much-time-spent-in-XP-vs-OSX thing.


Actually, now that I've examined the options, I know exactly how I'll do it. In OSX I'll, run two windows uniprocessor clients in wine. In windows, I'll run one uniprocessor client and one gpu client.

I really would prefer to run one uniprocessor client in wine and one gpu2 client in wine, and on the windows side run the same two clients natively. So where's the wrapper for ati gpu2 in linux and osx?
 
I really would prefer to run one uniprocessor client in wine and one gpu2 client in wine, and on the windows side run the same two clients natively. So where's the wrapper for ati gpu2 in linux and osx?

I would follow the Linux instructions at gpu2.twomurs.com as well as you can and see how far it gets. If you get stuck then post back here and Shelnutt or I will try and get things fixed. We need guinea pigs with time to spare since we don't have Macs or compatible ATI hardware.

On the Mac side we may need to recompile the wrapper but I'm hoping OSX's Unix base is compatible with Linux dynamic libraries.

Well one thing that has kept me from releasing it was I was in a disucssion with the Wine guys about adding back in support for native .so's by default in Wine.

Won't the system calls from the Win FAH CAL library still need to be converted to a Linux compatible one? Is Wine intelligent enough to do that on its own?
 
I would follow the Linux instructions at gpu2.twomurs.com as well as you can and see how far it gets. If you get stuck then post back here and Shelnutt or I will try and get things fixed. We need guinea pigs with time to spare since we don't have Macs or compatible ATI hardware.

On the Mac side we may need to recompile the wrapper but I'm hoping OSX's Unix base is compatible with Linux dynamic libraries.



Won't the system calls from the Win FAH CAL library still need to be converted to a Linux compatible one? Is Wine intelligent enough to do that on its own?

It's not looking good for OS X with ati, the OS X driver do not support CAL, nor do they have the sdk available for CAL on OS X. Linux and OS X are not straight binary compatible (ELF vs Mach-o, so I've read). So until ATI supports it or we find a way to make the linux stuff work on OS X, we are SOL.

Now as far as having to convert calls from win to lin, nope! That is the wonderful thing about CAL and CUDA, they are ~90% straight compatible, meaning the calls are exactly the same in both linux and windows to the library. The only difference is the few directX calls in the windows but not linux client. Those calls unless absolutely needed are left out of the wrapper. It is too much work to figure out how to translate them into opengl calls, and back to CUDA/CAL calls. You thinking is the same as the Wine guys. For nearly every other library out there you do need to translate the calls, because while the calls are similar there is always some difference between windows and linux libraries. That is their argument on why it's too much work for not enough gain. Even though I'm more than willing to do it all, if someone would just point me to the last version of Wine that included this support.
 
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