> what the purpose and use-case is for ReBAR
Literally the second sentence in the repo:
> This provides performance benefits and is even required for Intel Arc GPUs to function optimally.
Literally the second sentence in the repo:
> This provides performance benefits and is even required for Intel Arc GPUs to function optimally.
What is a BAR let alone a resizable one? Readme just jumps in, which is fine, but I’m not sure why this is on HN or why I should care.
Also, ReBAR can get complicated as you can see from other responses above. The articles on the web are also not really good as they tend to replicate marketing material and make vague statements about performance, but fail to explain how specifically performance is improved.
Same as his: to voice my frustration about something on the internet.
Wrong.
> I'm still clueless on what the purpose and use-case is for ReBAR
Are you seriously debating this?
Or to put it differently, I would take the sentence "He asked for a purpose and a use-case not an explanation." and replace the word "not" with a comma.
I agree with "He asked for a purpose and a use-case". (This is what your quote supports.)
I disagree with "not an explanation".
When asking for a purpose and use case, they were asking for an explanation.
In the old days, they were a fixed size. If your GPU has 16 GB of ram and you want to access all of it via memory addresses, you'd need a 16 GB BAR ... but lots of (older) systems wouldn't be able to map in a large BAR because of a lack of address lines (or wahtever), so GPUs had stayed with 256MB for VRAM access because it was compatible. With a smaller BAR than the VRAM, you have to use some sort of windowing / paging setup. Resizable BAR lets the BAR start small so older systems will work, but grow larger with capable systems.
Much better than having a jumper to set the BAR to big or small, and you can skip VRAM window management.