From owner-freebsd-alpha Tue Feb 6 21:19:41 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from peorth.iteration.net (peorth.iteration.net [208.190.180.178]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0F4A737B401 for ; Tue, 6 Feb 2001 21:19:23 -0800 (PST) Received: by peorth.iteration.net (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 033DA57621; Tue, 6 Feb 2001 23:19:55 -0600 (CST) Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 23:19:55 -0600 From: "Michael C . Wu" To: Michael Richards Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Stable Support for AS1200 Message-ID: <20010206231955.B13708@peorth.iteration.net> Reply-To: "Michael C . Wu" Mail-Followup-To: "Michael C . Wu" , Michael Richards , freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG References: <3A80D178.00021D.01465@frodo.searchcanada.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <3A80D178.00021D.01465@frodo.searchcanada.ca>; from michael@fastmail.ca on Tue, Feb 06, 2001 at 11:39:20PM -0500 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 5025 F691 F943 8128 48A8 5025 77CE 29C5 8FA1 2E20 X-PGP-Key-ID: 0x8FA12E20 Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, Feb 06, 2001 at 11:39:20PM -0500, Michael Richards scribbled: | I just got a pair of AlphaServer 1200's (Dual 533 CPU). I know very | little about the Alpha but I chose these machines because they were | very inexpensive and because I knew there was a FreeBSD port. They are also quite fast for that age. | When I got the first machine I downloaded the boot floppy and | attempted to install. Reading the mailing list posts it doesn't look | like it will work and certainly not support SMP. Is this accurate | info or is it based on outdated info? It is accurate info. No SMP on FreeBSD/Alpha | I know one thing for certain, I'm not going to pay $7800 CAD per | server for a Tru64 license! Sad truth is that you would get SMP out of using Linux. I do know that Linux/Alpha does not scale very well according to IBM Linux Technology Center internal documents that I have read. i.e. For a quad 21264 system, Linux/Alpha scales to 2.9-3 / 4 CPU's (Linux gets only 3 CPU performance out of having 4 processors. The comparison is zeroed against a Linux 2.4 UP kernel.) However, 3/4 CPU scalability is, sadly, much better than running FreeBSD/Alpha, because you only get to use one processor. | What are my options as far as FreeBSD-Alpha goes? Is it reasonable to Really, not much. | expect the same level of stability as I have seen (hardware aside) | from our Intel based FreeBSD boxen? Yes, if you are willing to use only one processor. In addition, Compaq released the DECUnix CC compiler for Linux for free. This makes all binaries compiled by the CCC compiler faster and smaller. If you use FreeBSD/Alpha, the Compaq CC is in the Ports. -- +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | keichii@peorth.iteration.net | keichii@bsdconspiracy.net | | http://peorth.iteration.net/~keichii | Yes, BSD is a conspiracy. | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message