Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 13:57:40 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <dyson@iquest.net> To: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert) Cc: sas@schell.de, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD 3.1 SMP outperforms SuSE 6.0 SMP by factor 2.3 !!! Message-ID: <199903161857.NAA08450@y.dyson.net> In-Reply-To: <199903161839.LAA09895@usr06.primenet.com> from Terry Lambert at "Mar 16, 99 06:39:00 pm"
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Terry Lambert said: > > The main SMP competitive failur for FreeBSD and Linux is the lack > of a unified central architectural plan, with a roadmap going > forward that addresses the SMP issue, in toto. > Yes. An SMP architecture is a more specific design than UP. A proper SMP design can be degraded into a reasonable UP design. However, a purely UP design (and excellent on at that) doesn't necessarily translate cleanly to a supurb SMP design. The lowest levels should be redesigned (from the ground up), and then the old stuff can be bolted back on. As time goes on, the old stuff can migrate to a more SMP optimal design. The networking code is probably too much to quickly change, but the VM code is an excellent candidate to be one of the first truely SMP subsystems. With ALC (and the VM support team), there is a *good* chance of it being done properly. Starting with a UP kernel, thinking of "enhancing it", as opposed to having a proper plan and target will doom the project to continual rework in order to approach reasonable behavior. (Defining "reasonable" as a design that requires few excuses about tradeoffs.) IMO, a LL SMP infrastructure needs to be defined (and I am being lax at it right now). After that infrastucture is defined, then the subsystem interfaces to that structure become easier to develop. The key is to both avoid hodge-podge design, while having a smooth transition to the future. -- John | Never try to teach a pig to sing, dyson@iquest.net | it makes one look stupid jdyson@nc.com | and it irritates the pig. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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