Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 14:25:46 -0800 (PST) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: Kelly Yancey <kbyanc@posi.net> Cc: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, Mats Lofkvist <mal@algonet.se>, imp@village.org, bmilekic@technokratis.com, arch@FreeBSD.ORG, Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Subject: Re: 64 bit counters again Message-ID: <XFMail.020115142546.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0201151358310.21843-100000@gateway.posi.net>
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On 15-Jan-02 Kelly Yancey wrote: > On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, John Baldwin wrote: > >> FWIW, I agree that doing 64-bit counters on IA32 is more of a pain >> than its worth, so I think it's not quite the Terry vs. the world >> some people would like to believe. Terry is trying to get people >> to use solutions that scale. Bumping the size of the counter for >> bytes doesn't scale, it just postpones the problem a little. >> >> If you really want a 64-bit counter, go get an alpha or when 5.0 >> comes out an ultrasparc or ia64 box. >> > > I'm sorry, but that's akin to saying that implementing SMP on i386 is more > of a pain than it is worth and if you really want a good SMP implementation > you should just buy a box from Sun. A legitimate engineering problem was > presented, presumably there is a legitimate engineering solution. Finding one > that everyone can agree on is another thing entirely... :) Yes, the legit solution is not to just band-aid the problem by bumping your counter size. Peter Jeremy's post which highlighted the type of implementation Terry was talking about is quite straightforward. We can get away with bumping time_t when the time comes because time dosen't increase exponentially, but hardware speeds do increease exponentially. Might as well solve the problem for real. :) > Kelly -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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