Good day, I think ZFS can take advantage of using GPU for sha256 calculation, encryption and maybe compression. Modern video card, like 5xxx or 6xxx ATI HD Series can do calculation of sha256 50-100 times faster than modern 4 cores CPU. kgpu project for linux shows nice results. ''zfs scrub'' would work freely on high performance ZFS pools. The only problem that there is no AMD/Nvidia drivers for Solaris that support hardware-assisted OpenCL. Is anyone interested in it? Best regards, Anatoly Legkodymov.
On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Anatoly <legko777 at fastmail.fm> wrote:> Good day, > > I think ZFS can take advantage of using GPU for sha256 calculation, > encryption and maybe compression. Modern video card, like 5xxx or 6xxx ATI > HD Series can do calculation of sha256 50-100 times faster than modern 4 > cores CPU.Ignoring optimizations from SIMD extensions like SSE and friends, this is probably true. However, the GPU also has to deal with the overhead of data transfer to itself before it can even begin crunching data. Granted, a Gen. 2 x16 link is quite speedy, but is CPU performance really that poor where a GPU can still out-perform it? My undergrad thesis dealt with computational acceleration utilizing CUDA, and the datasets had to scale quite a ways before there was a noticeable advantage in using a Tesla or similar over a bog-standard i7-920.> The only problem that there is no AMD/Nvidia drivers for Solaris that > support hardware-assisted OpenCL.This, and keep in mind that most of the professional users here will likely be using professional hardware, where a simple 8MB Rage XL gets the job done thanks to the magic of out-of-band management cards and other such facilities. Even as a home user, I have not placed a high-end videocard into my machine, I use a $5 ATI PCI videocard that saw about a hour of use whilst I installed Solaris 11. -- --khd
Hung-Sheng Tsao (LaoTsao) Ph. D.
2011-May-10 15:44 UTC
[zfs-discuss] GPU acceleration of ZFS
IMHO, zfs need to run in all kind of HW T-series CMT server that can help sha calculation since T1 day, did not see any work in ZFS to take advantage it On 5/10/2011 11:29 AM, Anatoly wrote:> Good day, > > I think ZFS can take advantage of using GPU for sha256 calculation, > encryption and maybe compression. Modern video card, like 5xxx or 6xxx > ATI HD Series can do calculation of sha256 50-100 times faster than > modern 4 cores CPU. > > kgpu project for linux shows nice results. > > ''zfs scrub'' would work freely on high performance ZFS pools. > > The only problem that there is no AMD/Nvidia drivers for Solaris that > support hardware-assisted OpenCL. > > Is anyone interested in it? > > Best regards, > Anatoly Legkodymov. > > > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss-------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: laotsao.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 250 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20110510/e86c28e1/attachment.vcf>
On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:29 PM, Anatoly <legko777 at fastmail.fm> wrote:> Good day, > > I think ZFS can take advantage of using GPU for sha256 calculation, > encryption and maybe compression. Modern video card, like 5xxx or 6xxx ATI > HD Series can do calculation of sha256 50-100 times faster than modern 4 > cores CPU. > > kgpu project for linux shows nice results. > > ''zfs scrub'' would work freely on high performance ZFS pools. > > The only problem that there is no AMD/Nvidia drivers for Solaris that > support hardware-assisted OpenCL. > > Is anyone interested in it?This isn''t technically true. The NVIDIA drivers support compute, but there''s other parts of the toolchain missing. /* I don''t know about ATI/AMD, but I''d guess they likely don''t support compute across platforms */ /* Disclaimer - The company I work for has a working HMPP compiler for Solaris/FreeBSD and we may soon support CUDA */
On 10 May 2011, at 16:44, Hung-Sheng Tsao (LaoTsao) Ph. D. wrote:> > IMHO, zfs need to run in all kind of HW > T-series CMT server that can help sha calculation since T1 day, did not see any work in ZFS to take advantage itThat support would be in the crypto framework though, not ZFS per se. So I think the OP might consider how best to add GPU support to the crypto framework. Chris