From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 26 19:00:28 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F15E106567D for ; Tue, 26 May 2009 19:00:28 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kirk@strauser.com) Received: from kanga.honeypot.net (kanga.honeypot.net [IPv6:2001:470:a80a:1:21f:d0ff:fe22:b8a8]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E16F88FC23 for ; Tue, 26 May 2009 19:00:27 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kirk@strauser.com) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by kanga.honeypot.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C07F644B for ; Tue, 26 May 2009 14:00:27 -0500 (CDT) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at honeypot.net Received: from kanga.honeypot.net ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (kanga.honeypot.net [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id Svnd7YgObnRM for ; Tue, 26 May 2009 14:00:25 -0500 (CDT) Received: from athena.localnet (athena.daycos.com [IPv6:2001:470:c054:1:221:9bff:fe00:de3f]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by kanga.honeypot.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id F2D666442 for ; Tue, 26 May 2009 14:00:24 -0500 (CDT) From: Kirk Strauser To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 14:00:21 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.11.3 (Linux/2.6.28-11-generic; KDE/4.2.3; x86_64; ; ) References: <4A1AA3DC.5020300@network-i.net> <4A1C3725.8040509@infracaninophile.co.uk> <70C0964126D66F458E688618E1CD008A0793ED94@WADPEXV0.waddell.com> In-Reply-To: <70C0964126D66F458E688618E1CD008A0793ED94@WADPEXV0.waddell.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200905261400.22053.kirk@strauser.com> Subject: Re: FreeBSD & Software RAID X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 19:00:28 -0000 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