From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Sep 2 14:46:10 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA11170 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Wed, 2 Sep 1998 14:46:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from fosse.virage.com (mail.virage.com [206.169.1.82]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA11165 for ; Wed, 2 Sep 1998 14:46:09 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from brandon@virage.com) Received: from cliff.virage.com (cliff [128.0.0.179]) by fosse.virage.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id OAA11757 for ; Wed, 2 Sep 1998 14:45:07 -0700 Received: from virage.com (zaha [128.0.0.173]) by cliff.virage.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id OAA01397 for ; Wed, 2 Sep 1998 14:45:06 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <35EDBC47.C2698460@virage.com> Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 14:44:39 -0700 From: Brandon Huey Reply-To: brandon@virage.com Organization: Virage, Inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.06 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.6-RELEASE i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cpu considerations for packet filtering Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG yes, i need to get a clue about hardware. i guess i've been misled in a way by the PII's... thinking L2 cache is something integrated on-chip. i generally see systems marketed with L2 cache and cpu vaguely suggested as one feature, ie: "Pentium II/266 w/512KB L2 cache" but if it were just a matter of getting the right mobo, what explains the introduction of the celeron and the two version of the pentium pro with varrying cache sizes? let me ask a more broad question to stay on track: for packet filtering and heavy network usage, how important is cpu and should i give up on-chip cache to keep the cost of this unit down? thanks, -bh Steve Friedrich wrote: > > On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 13:35:53 -0700, Brandon Huey wrote: > > >how important is L2 cache for packet-filtering, and heavy network > >traffic in general? > > > >i have a very small 3.0-SNAP kernel with ipf and ssh that will boot from > >floppy into memory. the hard drive in the machine is used only for > >logging. i'm writing a front-end to ipf so that the admin of this > >gateway can generate new rules and have them updated via scp. > >i want to build this as cheaply as possible and am interested by the AMD > >3D cpu which i have found for < $100. the possible downside is that it > >has no integrated cache. > > > >advice? > > I'm confused... Level 2 cache is usually located on the motherboard, > with the Pentium II being the odd man out (nice if you have a big > enough die). Are you saying the motherboard doesn't have an L2 cache > ?? If you're getting a motherboard that has no L2 but it does have the > CPU, you can always buy a different motherboard. I went to AMDs web > site and their description of their 3DNow chips show an L1 cache... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message