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Date:      Thu, 14 Dec 2006 07:55:17 -0800
From:      "David O'Brien" <obrien@freebsd.org>
To:        Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org>
Cc:        cvs-src@freebsd.org, src-committers@freebsd.org, mjacob@freebsd.org, cvs-all@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/sys/amd64/conf GENERIC
Message-ID:  <20061214155517.GA21748@dragon.NUXI.org>
In-Reply-To: <4580DE4E.3080008@samsco.org>
References:  <200612140357.kBE3vY0Q053458@repoman.freebsd.org> <4580CD6A.5090802@samsco.org> <20061213201031.T26658@ns1.feral.com> <4580D3BB.7060504@samsco.org> <20061213210116.P26879@ns1.feral.com> <4580DE4E.3080008@samsco.org>

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On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 08:13:24PM -0800, mjacob@freebsd.org wrote:
> Secondly, I would *like* to have SMP on as a default in RELENG_6 for 
> amd64, as it would avoid doing what I've done twice already- fresh 
> sysinstall may or may not have installed an SMP kernel but going off and 
> building GENERIC then lost me my SMP. It's sort a violation of POLA.

Rather close what happened to me and what lead to the commit.


On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 10:17:02PM -0700, Scott Long wrote:
> mjacob@freebsd.org wrote:
> > Scott Long wrote:
> > > There wasn't a full switchover to SMP at 6.0 because an SMP kernel
> > > on a UP system incurs a measurable runtime overhead, and we wanted
> > > to present a system that showed the best of FreeBSD to people who
> > > wanted to run it

Then why is sparc64's GENERIC kernel SMP in RELENG_6?


> > But David's point is that most AMD64 boxes *are* SMP, not UP.  Is
> > that wrong?
> 
> 1. There are plenty of single core Opterons and Athlon64 chips still
> in service.

A few points:

* FreeBSD is predominately a server OS, not home desktop OS.

* Practically all single core Opteron's are used in multi-socket systems.
There are very, very few Opteron single socket, single core Opteron's in
service as there are only a very small handful of single socket 940-pin
motherboards.

* Most Athlon64 single-core CPU's are run in 32-bit "i386" mode.
FreeBSD/i386 isn't the platform I (and presumably Matt) are talking
about.

> Maybe AMD sells more SMP systems now than UP systems, but their prior
> sales of UP systems didn't magically disappear overnight.

This is not an AMD-only situation.

Intel has been selling dual-core processors since 18 April 2005, and now
sells quad-core processors.  Also, Intel kept Long Model (i.e., EM64T)
to the server/workstation segment until its dual-core processors.  For
instance, most Intel laptops cannot run FreeBSD/AMD64.

-- 
-- David  (obrien@FreeBSD.org)



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