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libSoftFloat 1.0 Released, Still Working Towards Emulated FP64 Support For GPUs

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  • libSoftFloat 1.0 Released, Still Working Towards Emulated FP64 Support For GPUs

    Phoronix: libSoftFloat 1.0 Released, Still Working Towards Emulated FP64 Support For GPUs

    Last week marked the release of libSoftFloat 1.0, the library working to implement double-precision operations in pure GLSL 1.30 via bit twiddling operations and integer math. This is the most hopeful effort yet for getting OpenGL FP64 support exposed for older GPUs that lack native support...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Nice. I've still got a Radeon 6850 at home that would be able to benefit from this, and my work laptop is a Haswell, which still hasn't landed support for the fp64 capabilities (and could emulate it until the real support is landed).

    Great job, Elie Tournier.

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    • #3
      Yeah, it's nice to see GSoC projects come to fruition.

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      • #4
        It would be cool if some hardware with very low fp64 and high fp32 rates would benefit from that, especially if fp64 emulated rate would be higher than provided by hardware. Namely NVIDIA's kepler and maxwell with their 1/24 and 1/32 fp64 rate.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by blacknova View Post
          It would be cool if some hardware with very low fp64 and high fp32 rates would benefit from that, especially if fp64 emulated rate would be higher than provided by hardware. Namely NVIDIA's kepler and maxwell with their 1/24 and 1/32 fp64 rate.
          I don't believe this will work on Nvidia unless you are using open Noveau drivers. Nvidia have a 1/24 and 1/32 fp64 rate because they can.. It forces scientists to purchase their expensive workstation cards instead of gaming cards to get a good fp64 rate.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by blacknova View Post
            if fp64 emulated rate would be higher than provided by hardware
            nobody will make hardware slower than emulation, it is a transistor budget wastage

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            • #7
              Originally posted by pal666 View Post
              nobody will make hardware slower than emulation, it is a transistor budget wastage
              I'm not that sure about it. Nvidia's kepler and maxwell fp64 rates are abnormally low, given that 'full' chips goes at 1/2 or 1/4 of fp32 rate (cannot remember right now). If fp64 emulation on nvidia chip can be faster than 1/24 or 1/32 rates respectively it would still be a win.

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              • #8
                I don't think anyone at this point would even consider using a HD 68xx for heavy computing and/or professional use. It's all about budget gaming. People keep them because they work fine and they don't need more, or because they can't afford a better one.

                When it comes to gaming, it's all about being able to officially expose OGL 4.0. Because there is still 0 linux games using fp64, when the switch is flipped, this new code will be there, but will never run for most people. Its speed is irrelevant, only interesting for running some (non-gaming) benchmarks on it.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by blacknova View Post
                  Nvidia's kepler and maxwell fp64 rates are abnormally low, given that 'full' chips goes at 1/2 or 1/4 of fp32 rate (cannot remember right now). If fp64 emulation on nvidia chip can be faster than 1/24 or 1/32 rates respectively it would still be a win.
                  you still don't get it. if it was possible to make faster emulation, nvidia would spare transistors and do emulation, because it is cheaper

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by eydee View Post
                    I don't think anyone at this point would even consider using a HD 68xx for heavy computing and/or professional use. It's all about budget gaming. People keep them because they work fine and they don't need more, or because they can't afford a better one.

                    When it comes to gaming, it's all about being able to officially expose OGL 4.0. Because there is still 0 linux games using fp64, when the switch is flipped, this new code will be there, but will never run for most people. Its speed is irrelevant, only interesting for running some (non-gaming) benchmarks on it.
                    Newer games are starting to require 4.3 now, and fp64 support for the 6800 will still only enable GL 4.1. Some of the remaining features needed like SSBO support and compute shaders are fairly complicated.

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