Topic: [BOUNTY] sha256 shader for Linux OSS video drivers (15 BTC pledged) - page 3. (Read 31384 times)

No. They lack the hardware design to run programs like this, plus they would be amazingly slow.

Not at all. Xorg nor FDO accept donations in BTC.

That was a reference to the starting point for the architecture in the source code.  You find R700/R800/+ hardware support code in directories labelled "r600" due to several similarities.


If that was true, then somebody would have collected the $3000+ in free money.

I'm not a programmer, so I don't know what I'm talking about here, but could such a linux binary permit graphics hardware too old to use the current miners to contribute at a respectable hash/watt rate even if they such at the hash/second rate?

This is pointless. R600 cannot run compute shaders of the kind we need, R700 (Radeon 4xxx) suck at it.

Also, Mesa has a prototype OpenCL compiler for Gallium targets. Your "bounty" is technically already completed before you started.

If you really want to help open source, go work on that project instead.

bump, and updated first post to include the two most recent pledges (from past 30 days).

At today's exchange rate, the bounty is over $3,100.

Here's another 10 BTC. With the recent USD price of bitcoins, I wouldn't even say "it's not much".

Its not much, but I'll pledge 10 BTC.  Evey little bit(coin) counts right? 

Bump, for the new arrivals. 

I will pledge 25 BTC for this.

Bump.  Increased bounty to 400 BTC.

Here's a link showing several examples of asm shaders on ATI:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati/tree/src/evergreen_shader.c

and here is some useful Mesa code for building asm shaders:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/tree/src/mesa/drivers/dri/r600/r700_assembler.c
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/tree/src/mesa/drivers/dri/r600/r700_shader.c

I'm offering 50 BTC to the first only-open-source miner to achieve a minimum of 252 MH/s (that's 95% of my present 265 MH/s) on my Radeon 5850. To claim, please send me an email at [email protected] with the SHA256 hash of your miner tbz2, in case this turns out to be a close race.

Edit: This offer is expired.

Become an open source hero, and help bitcoin too!

OK, I think this project would see some real return (in BTC) on Linux, for all the miners out there.  It would benefit open source as well.

The Project
-------------------------------------------------------
Successfully load and execute a sha256 "compute shader", using 100% open source video drivers on Linux (using closed source ATI tools to produce shader binary is permitted).  Any Linux OS/distribution, as long as it's a recent version.  Must work on ATI 5870/5970 hardware.


Rationale
-------------------------------------------------------
1. In theory, the closed source ATI SDK and video driver should not be needed, once we have a compiled shader.  It would make life much easier on Linux, and expand our miner base, if stock open source drivers can be used for GPU mining.

2. Open source GPGPU efforts are moving slowly, and this would help jump-start those efforts, by providing a working example.  This has the potential to be a high profile contribution to the OSS community.


Details
-------------------------------------------------------
According to some knowledgeable hackers, it should be possible to upload a "compute shader" using current Linux/OSS video drivers, via the Linux DRI APIs.  The programmer (or team) would need to figure out how to coax ATI's SDK to produce a compiled, binary object that is then loaded into an open source driver, and executed.

The person or team collecting this bounty will need to be able to accomplish tasks such as rebuilding and replacing the kernel, rebuilding and replacing Mesa (OpenGL/DRI), and rebuilding/replacing the X server.  Even though these are non-programming tasks, they are decidedly non-trivial.

This code (from ATI?) should be helpful in demonstrating how to work with 5870/5970 hardware: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/r600_demo/tree/?h=master

Although this task should be largely a "put together existing pieces and make them work" task, it is still quite complex.


The Pledges (in BTC)
-------------------------------------------------------
I'm hoping to raise at least 200 BTC for this task, if not more.  Miners on Linux, consider pledging a block (or part of a block).

15     jgarzik


If you wish to pledge anonymously, send me a PM and I'll coordinate.

Pledges should be payable within 24 hours of a working example being posted publicly.