From owner-freebsd-hardware Thu Apr 10 13:20:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA27500 for hardware-outgoing; Thu, 10 Apr 1997 13:20:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from po2.glue.umd.edu (root@po2.glue.umd.edu [129.2.128.45]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA27489 for ; Thu, 10 Apr 1997 13:20:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from skipper.eng.umd.edu (skipper.eng.umd.edu [129.2.103.24]) by po2.glue.umd.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA20990; Thu, 10 Apr 1997 16:20:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (chuckr@localhost) by skipper.eng.umd.edu (8.8.5/8.6.4) with SMTP id QAA03293; Thu, 10 Apr 1997 16:20:36 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: skipper.eng.umd.edu: chuckr owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 16:20:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey X-Sender: chuckr@skipper.eng.umd.edu To: Stephen Roome cc: Dave Alderman , hardware@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Pentuim or Pentuim Pro ? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hardware@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 10 Apr 1997, Stephen Roome wrote: > > Not for FreeBSD. The basic interprocessor communications is done by the > > APIC hardware, of which there are two flavors: Intel's patented APIC > > design, and everyone else's OpenApic. Only trouble is, all the existing > > motherboards, and FreeBSD's software, support Intel's APIC design, not > > OpenApic. I'm not aware that there's any support in any OS for OpenApic, > > or in any motherboard that's available. > > > So, basically that nothing is going to be multiprocessor > unless either. > 1) Someone rewrites/patches/whatever each OS with OpenApic support. > 2) It's an Intel chip ? > > If so, this is as bad news as Socket-1 for the market.. (is there an > International Monopolies/Mergers commition to stop Intel putting everyone > else out of the market ?) Worse than that, even the motherboards don't support Open Apic designs. Can't get there from here. ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@eng.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 9120 Edmonston Ct #302 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run Journey2 and picnic, both FreeBSD (301) 220-2114 | version 3.0 current -- and great FUN! ----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------