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Date:      Tue, 26 May 2009 14:00:21 -0500
From:      Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD & Software RAID
Message-ID:  <200905261400.22053.kirk@strauser.com>
In-Reply-To: <70C0964126D66F458E688618E1CD008A0793ED94@WADPEXV0.waddell.com>
References:  <4A1AA3DC.5020300@network-i.net> <4A1C3725.8040509@infracaninophile.co.uk> <70C0964126D66F458E688618E1CD008A0793ED94@WADPEXV0.waddell.com>

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On Tuesday 26 May 2009 01:44:51 pm Gary Gatten wrote:
> What about with PAE and/or other extension schemes?
>
> If it's just memory requirements, can I assume if I don't have a $hit
> load of storage and billions of files it will work "ok" with 4GB of RAM?
> I guess I'm just making sure there isn't some bug that only exists on
> the i386 architecture?

My understanding is that it's much more than "just" the memory addressing.  
ZFS is thoroughly 64-bit and uses 64-bit math pervasively.  That means you 
have to emulate all those operations with 2 32-bit values, and on the 
register-starved x86 platform you end up with absolutely horrible performance.  
Furthermore, it's just not that well tested.  Sun designed ZFS for 64-bit 
systems and I think 32-bit support was pretty much an afterthought.
-- 
Kirk Strauser



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