From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jun 9 12:26:21 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9C7E9F96 for ; Mon, 9 Jun 2014 12:26:21 +0000 (UTC) Received: from gromit.dlib.vt.edu (gromit.dlib.vt.edu [128.173.49.29]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "gromit.dlib.vt.edu", Issuer "Chumby Certificate Authority" (not verified)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6F26F2F19 for ; Mon, 9 Jun 2014 12:26:21 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pmather.tower.lib.vt.edu (pmather.tower.lib.vt.edu [128.173.51.28]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by gromit.dlib.vt.edu (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 8C06C36B; Mon, 9 Jun 2014 08:19:59 -0400 (EDT) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 7.3 \(1878.2\)) Subject: Re: Not to beat a dead horse, but ... From: Paul Mather In-Reply-To: <5394F72E.4080306@m5p.com> Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2014 08:19:58 -0400 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: References: <5394A848.7030609@m5p.com> <5394B80A.2030901@m5p.com> <20140608232203.GN31367@funkthat.com> <5394F72E.4080306@m5p.com> To: George Mitchell X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1878.2) Cc: FreeBSD Stable Mailing List , Andreas Nilsson X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 12:26:21 -0000 On Jun 8, 2014, at 7:52 PM, George Mitchell wrote: > On 06/08/14 19:22, John-Mark Gurney wrote: >> [...] it turns out that the electricity >> savings in a year, paid for the entire cost of the new switch... We >> were talking ~$250/year in savings, so, upgrading can end up saving >> you money... >> > Thanks for the advice on what hardware I should run. But why should I > believe that upgrading to SMP and running with ULE will make my life > better? In fact, when I tried ULE + a six-core system + dnetc + make > buildworld, etc., a couple of years ago (I do have one SMP system), > the results were just as appalling compared to 4BSD as with a single > processor. -- George One reason to believe that things might be better could be that a lot of development can happen in "a couple of years." It's my belief, in fact, that a focus of FreeBSD development in recent years has been in improving performance on multi-core systems. I recently replaced my single-core FreeBSD/i386 system with a six-core FreeBSD/amd64 system and my buildworld+buildkernel times went down from over 5 hours to under 40 minutes. The only single-core systems I run any more are on FreeBSD/arm. As others have pointed out, it gets harder and harder to buy new mainstream single-core systems, so it's inevitable that there will be less contemporary development focus there. Cheers, Paul.