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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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