Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 2010-01-30 13:33, Trajce Nikolov wrote: Hi Jan, I ve got a question, if you can help. Do I have to do some mods in the app to support SLI ? Thanks ! Nick Hi, If you mean SLI as having the cards interconnected and configured as a single logical card (not merely multiple cards in the machine - that is not SLI), then you do not need to do anything. To OpenGL it looks as a normal card, you create contexts as usual, there is nothing special about it. All the SLI functionality is in the driver and hardware. It is supposed to just work. Regards, Jan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iD8DBQFLZZ1pn11XseNj94gRAnv2AKDqX1KWuWmwyWDoSyI0VazZI85ySQCg281g bo1C/xttByf8g6IQupxcxug= =wI2p -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
ok ... thanks a lot. I saw couple of sites where some games were tagged as SLI ready . Nick http://www.linkedin.com/in/tnick On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Jan Ciger jan.ci...@gmail.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 2010-01-30 13:33, Trajce Nikolov wrote: Hi Jan, I ve got a question, if you can help. Do I have to do some mods in the app to support SLI ? Thanks ! Nick Hi, If you mean SLI as having the cards interconnected and configured as a single logical card (not merely multiple cards in the machine - that is not SLI), then you do not need to do anything. To OpenGL it looks as a normal card, you create contexts as usual, there is nothing special about it. All the SLI functionality is in the driver and hardware. It is supposed to just work. Regards, Jan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iD8DBQFLZZ1pn11XseNj94gRAnv2AKDqX1KWuWmwyWDoSyI0VazZI85ySQCg281g bo1C/xttByf8g6IQupxcxug= =wI2p -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 2010-01-31 16:21, Trajce Nikolov wrote: ok ... thanks a lot. I saw couple of sites where some games were tagged as SLI ready . Nick LOL! It is just free, meaningless marketing babble - SLI is purposely designed to be transparent for the games, otherwise nobody would support it (like the hw physics accelerators or other weird stuff like that). SLI doesn't do anything more than split the workload among the multiple cards, with each card rendering every other frame (2-way SLI, AFR mode) or half of the frame (2-way SLI, SFR mode). I didn't use 4-way SLI, but I believe it works pretty much the same, just the load is divided 4 times. I guess we can label OSG as SLI ready as well :-p Regards, Jan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iD8DBQFLZaqpn11XseNj94gRAu07AJ40FGG5sTCkS1cK1gPJVYHWIclPaACdGgV4 R+SsLCbBPngq9EcdRilPz8Q= =oUOo -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
LOL ... Ok .. Thanks ! Nick http://www.linkedin.com/in/tnick On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 6:07 PM, Jan Ciger jan.ci...@gmail.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 2010-01-31 16:21, Trajce Nikolov wrote: ok ... thanks a lot. I saw couple of sites where some games were tagged as SLI ready . Nick LOL! It is just free, meaningless marketing babble - SLI is purposely designed to be transparent for the games, otherwise nobody would support it (like the hw physics accelerators or other weird stuff like that). SLI doesn't do anything more than split the workload among the multiple cards, with each card rendering every other frame (2-way SLI, AFR mode) or half of the frame (2-way SLI, SFR mode). I didn't use 4-way SLI, but I believe it works pretty much the same, just the load is divided 4 times. I guess we can label OSG as SLI ready as well :-p Regards, Jan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iD8DBQFLZaqpn11XseNj94gRAu07AJ40FGG5sTCkS1cK1gPJVYHWIclPaACdGgV4 R+SsLCbBPngq9EcdRilPz8Q= =oUOo -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
Hi Jan, I ve got a question, if you can help. Do I have to do some mods in the app to support SLI ? Thanks ! Nick http://www.linkedin.com/in/tnick On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 5:25 PM, Jan Ciger jan.ci...@gmail.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 2010-01-26 15:05, Trajce Nikolov wrote: Hi Robert, To share the data of the RTT card you'll need to use a double buffered PBO to copy the data back to main memory and then to copy back to the GPU's that need to use it. if this is the only way of doing it, could point me to some details ? Actually, careful here. SLI means that your 4 cards are linked on the hardware level and the driver presents only ONE logical card to the higher level software (OpenGL). Essentially the hardware uses each card to render a portion of the frame (SFR mode) or alternating frames (AFR mode) or to perform antialiasing. The load balancing is all done in the driver and hardware, the userspace has no control whatsoever over it. In this case you cannot do what you want. If you do not turn SLI on (do not install the hw bridges and disable the option in the driver) and only install the 4 cards in the machine, then you have 4 separate heads. However, then you are on your own with regards to creation of contexts and moving data between cards. It will be also very likely slow, because the main bus will be used instead of the dedicated SLI interconnects. Regards, Jan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iD8DBQFLXwlJn11XseNj94gRAilHAJwPs559ZiW2YNiNczbwJyqB5kk99gCdGfOq zJ82Zwplm8ti0m1VXbcXb20= =oWuO -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
Hi Nick, The OSG allows you to assign different graphics contexts to different cards, but sharing GL objects can't be done at the level you are after as the graphics driver and hardware all won't be able work that way. To share the data of the RTT card you'll need to use a double buffered PBO to copy the data back to main memory and then to copy back to the GPU's that need to use it. Robert. On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Trajce Nikolov nikolov.tra...@gmail.com wrote: Hi community, I am building an IG with 4 way SLI cards. QUite a hot machine. I am wondering if there is a way to dedicate some of the cards to run specifics task. My idea is for example, card 0 to run background rendering (mostly render to frame buffer objects) and 3 way SLI to render the scene. Is this distributed rendering feasible? Thanks, Nick http://www.linkedin.com/in/tnick ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
Hi Robert, To share the data of the RTT card you'll need to use a double buffered PBO to copy the data back to main memory and then to copy back to the GPU's that need to use it. if this is the only way of doing it, could point me to some details ? Thanks Nick http://www.linkedin.com/in/tnick On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Robert Osfield robert.osfi...@gmail.comwrote: Hi Nick, The OSG allows you to assign different graphics contexts to different cards, but sharing GL objects can't be done at the level you are after as the graphics driver and hardware all won't be able work that way. To share the data of the RTT card you'll need to use a double buffered PBO to copy the data back to main memory and then to copy back to the GPU's that need to use it. Robert. On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Trajce Nikolov nikolov.tra...@gmail.com wrote: Hi community, I am building an IG with 4 way SLI cards. QUite a hot machine. I am wondering if there is a way to dedicate some of the cards to run specifics task. My idea is for example, card 0 to run background rendering (mostly render to frame buffer objects) and 3 way SLI to render the scene. Is this distributed rendering feasible? Thanks, Nick http://www.linkedin.com/in/tnick ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
Hi, On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Trajce Nikolov nikolov.tra...@gmail.com wrote: I am building an IG with 4 way SLI cards. QUite a hot machine. I am wondering if there is a way to dedicate some of the cards to run specifics task. My idea is for example, card 0 to run background rendering (mostly render to frame buffer objects) and 3 way SLI to render the scene. Is this distributed rendering feasible? Yes, but you have to disable SLI, at least on some cards. You can find more information here: http://www.equalizergraphics.com/documentation/parallelOpenGLFAQ.html HTH, Stefan. -- http://www.eyescale.ch http://www.equalizergraphics.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/eilemann ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
Thanks Stefan. This is some general info but useful ... Nick http://www.linkedin.com/in/tnick On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:28 PM, Stefan Eilemann eilem...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Trajce Nikolov nikolov.tra...@gmail.com wrote: I am building an IG with 4 way SLI cards. QUite a hot machine. I am wondering if there is a way to dedicate some of the cards to run specifics task. My idea is for example, card 0 to run background rendering (mostly render to frame buffer objects) and 3 way SLI to render the scene. Is this distributed rendering feasible? Yes, but you have to disable SLI, at least on some cards. You can find more information here: http://www.equalizergraphics.com/documentation/parallelOpenGLFAQ.html HTH, Stefan. -- http://www.eyescale.ch http://www.equalizergraphics.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/eilemann ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 2010-01-26 15:05, Trajce Nikolov wrote: Hi Robert, To share the data of the RTT card you'll need to use a double buffered PBO to copy the data back to main memory and then to copy back to the GPU's that need to use it. if this is the only way of doing it, could point me to some details ? Actually, careful here. SLI means that your 4 cards are linked on the hardware level and the driver presents only ONE logical card to the higher level software (OpenGL). Essentially the hardware uses each card to render a portion of the frame (SFR mode) or alternating frames (AFR mode) or to perform antialiasing. The load balancing is all done in the driver and hardware, the userspace has no control whatsoever over it. In this case you cannot do what you want. If you do not turn SLI on (do not install the hw bridges and disable the option in the driver) and only install the 4 cards in the machine, then you have 4 separate heads. However, then you are on your own with regards to creation of contexts and moving data between cards. It will be also very likely slow, because the main bus will be used instead of the dedicated SLI interconnects. Regards, Jan -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iD8DBQFLXwlJn11XseNj94gRAilHAJwPs559ZiW2YNiNczbwJyqB5kk99gCdGfOq zJ82Zwplm8ti0m1VXbcXb20= =oWuO -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:25 PM, Jan Ciger jan.ci...@gmail.com wrote: However, then you are on your own with regards to creation of contexts and moving data between cards. It will be also very likely slow, because the main bus will be used instead of the dedicated SLI interconnects. True in the general case, but afaik the NV_copy_image extension is supposed to do GPU-to-GPU DMAs. HTH, Stefan. -- http://www.eyescale.ch http://www.equalizergraphics.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/eilemann ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
Stefan, does this direct GPU 2 GPU transfers need the SLI to be setup ? Jan, Dekuji za info Nick http://www.linkedin.com/in/tnick On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Stefan Eilemann eilem...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:25 PM, Jan Ciger jan.ci...@gmail.com wrote: However, then you are on your own with regards to creation of contexts and moving data between cards. It will be also very likely slow, because the main bus will be used instead of the dedicated SLI interconnects. True in the general case, but afaik the NV_copy_image extension is supposed to do GPU-to-GPU DMAs. HTH, Stefan. -- http://www.eyescale.ch http://www.equalizergraphics.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/eilemann ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
Re: [osg-users] 4 way SLI setup
On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:37 PM, Trajce Nikolov nikolov.tra...@gmail.com wrote: Stefan, does this direct GPU 2 GPU transfers need the SLI to be setup ? No, to my understanding. I haven't yet used this extension myself, but had a close look into it. Cheers, Stefan. -- http://www.eyescale.ch http://www.equalizergraphics.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/eilemann ___ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
