Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 01:38:42 +1000 From: Nick Withers <nick@nickwithers.com> To: danial_thom@yahoo.com Cc: jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Are hardware vendors starting to bail on FreeBSD ... ? Message-ID: <20060714013842.80b25aef.nick@nickwithers.com> In-Reply-To: <20060713152203.37932.qmail@web33303.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <200607131436.k6DEa1E6017776@clunix.cl.msu.edu> <20060713152203.37932.qmail@web33303.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
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On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 08:22:03 -0700 (PDT) Danial Thom <danial_thom@yahoo.com> wrote: > > --- Head in the sand Jerry mumbled: Just thought I should metion that this comes across as rude to me... but maybe that's just me! > > > --- Francisco Reyes <lists@stringsutils.com> > > > wrote: > > > > > > > Marc G. Fournier writes: > > > > > > > > > the problem is that none of the Tier 1 > > > > hardware manufacturer's support > > > > > FreeBSD, and a growing number of places > > (ie. > > > > Adaptec / Intel) appear to be > > > > > dropping support for it as well ... > > > > > > > > But companies like 3Ware and Areca are > > > > supporting it and from what I see on > > > > the lists, people are voting with their > > money > > > > in their favor. > > > > > > Mainly because they had drivers that required > > > little modification from previous versions. > > Intel > > > has a few other things on their plate, > > releasing > > > more processors to bail out Freebsd's paltry > > > performance, so give them a break. > > > > > > How long are vendors supposed to wait for the > > > FreeBSD developers to deliver the performance > > > they've claimed that they can deliver? I know > > > several network appliance vendors all stuck > > on > > > FreeBSD 4, because 5 and 6 are a step > > backwards > > > performance-wise. Now they're saying 7 will > > be > > > the one. > > > > > > FreeBSD is the OS that cried "WOLF", and the > > > vendors are starting to ignore the calls. The > > > infrastructure is so poor (in terms of > > process > > > switching times and scheduler efficiencies), > > and > > > they seem clueless on how to fix it. > > > > Must be a troll. > > FreeBSD performance is not what holds it back. > > It competes well with others out there. > > > > ////jerry > > No it doesn't, Jerry. Even Robert Watson, who > spends most of his time on performance issues, > readily admits that > > - FreeBSD 6 is faster with 1 processor than 2 > - FreeBSD 6 is slower with 1 processor than > Freebsd 4.x Would you mind providing a source for that information? I would not be at all surprised to hear that a FreeBSD 6.x dual-CPU set-up provides less than twice the performance as that of a single CPU FreeBSD 6.x set-up, but I will happily eat my own (mighty tasty) hat if a dual CPU FreeBSD 6.x set-up performs worse than a single FreeBSD 6.x set-up. That having been said, I tend to treat Robert Watson's word as gospel, but I'd like to see it in a form I can trust (honestly, no offense intended!) first (i.e., please provide a source for your information :-)). > The process switch times are 2-4x slower than on > linux. Thats not 2-4%, thats 200-400% slower. Could you provide me with a source here (Not trying to be rude, but I'd be really interested in reading about this)? > Simply enabling SMP on a single processor system > adds 20-25% overhead in freebsd 6.1. Whilst I have trouble accepting these particular figures, I don't doubt that there is *some* overhead in dealing with multiple CPUs, from a kernel perspective. > Again, readily admitted/accepted by the developers. > There is no way to recover that in efficiency, at > least not for a long time. > > What's really frightening is that Dragonfly is > going to shed the giant lock before Freebsd, and > there's only one guy working on it. Please see "http://www.dragonflybsd.org/about/team.cgi". My maths ain't great (alright, it's terrible!) but I count more than one committer. I'm probably just misunderstanding what you're trying to say here... > Its prima facie evidence that IQ isn't cumulative. > > DT Sorry if this appears stand-off-ish - I don't mean it do be! I do have a bias in favour of what I see as the best OS ever, though (better that MacOS 7.5.3, even! :-)) -- Nick Withers email: nick@nickwithers.com Web: http://www.nickwithers.com Mobile: +61 414 397 446
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