Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:56:09 -0500 From: "Kevin H. Patterson" <kpatterson.home@gmail.com> To: freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE on PowerMac Dual G5 Message-ID: <3934AD65-E01C-4DDD-8BDC-F52C6AE3655F@khptech.com>
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Hello, I've taken an interest lately in running FreeBSD on the powerpc64 = architecture. I have access to a dual 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5, and I've = successfully got FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE up and running on it. Only one thing seems amiss so far... it feels *very* SLOW. I realize = this is an older machine, but it feels much too slow for a dual G5. = Compiling seems to take forever, and top shows ~50% or more "system" CPU = usage when doing almost anything other than sitting idle. Furthermore, = the system fans never speed up, but run at the lowest speed even when = the system is under full load. I have tried both enabling and disabling = powerd support, with no effect. For a quick sanity check, I installed ubench (0.32) from ports. The = numbers were quite disappointing: 109870 CPU / 50527 MEM multiprocessor, = and 55433 CPU / 30863 MEM single-processor. For comparison, I ran ubench (0.32 from MacPorts) under Mac OS X 10.5.8 = on the same machine. This time, the fans do ramp up, and the numbers are = *WAY* better: 277207 CPU / 317119 MEM multi-processor, and 141021 CPU / = 284113 MEM single-processor. As you can see, all is not well. I am wondering what is slowing FreeBSD = down on this machine. I have tried both GENERIC and my own kernel = config. It feels like the CPU and or bus speed is clocked down perhaps = to the most energy-saving level. Maybe this is where openfirmware leaves = it after boot? Also interesting is to note the drastic = *single-processor* ubench difference between macosx and freebsd. To me = this looks like a low clock-speed smoking gun. I also noticed that the kernel build includes flags like -msoft-float = and -mno-altivec...=20 I am interested in any build or config tweaks that might be in order. I = am also more than happy to debug and get to the bottom of this. Any = ideas? Sincerely, Kevin H. Patterson KHPtech kevpatt@khptech.com
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