Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 17:58:47 +0300 (EEST) From: Penisoara Adrian <ady@warp.starnets.ro> To: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@MindBender.serv.net> Cc: Chuck Robey <chuckr@mat.net>, Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>, Steve Passe <smp@csn.net>, james@westongold.com, smp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: maptable of SuperMicro P6DNH Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970510172547.2843A-100000@ady.warp.starnets.ro> In-Reply-To: <199705100600.XAA15693@MindBender.serv.net>
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On Fri, 9 May 1997, Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com wrote: > [big snap] > >I don't know for sure, but I right now suspect FreeBSD is considerably > >ahead of MS in terms of stability on MP. I had to have a MS Windows > >environment this last semester, for an OS project I had to do. I tried > >installing NT on my SMP platform, which runs FreeBSD-SMP just ducky. > >Results were not good, it kept on panicing on install. > > Uh, I don't think so, Tim. Neither do I, it's my opinion. > I suspect you had a motherboard that simply wasn't supported. NT was > designed from the very first byte of code to support SMP. NT's SMP is > considerably finer-grained, more stable and mature than FreeBSD's. > (Not to knock FreeBSD -- the SMP guys are doing good work, but... it > has a ways to go.) > > I suspect you simply had a motherboard that wasn't supported. > Microsoft releases a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) that works for > motherboards that support it, which is the big mainstream guys. > Probably the stuff that is _strictly_ adherent to the Intel MP specs > (though have no inside knowledge of the criteria). If a vendor has > hardware that doesn't support the generic SMP HAL, they have to > provide their own (which many vendors have done). > > Windows NT isn't Windows 95. Nobody gets upset if Windows 95 crashes > every now and then. Believe me, _any_ crash and the NT guys are all > over it. They take stability serious as a heart attack (to abuse a > tired old cliche). > > I had them trying to get me to reproduce a crashing condition on my > machine at home, so they could get a crash dump to analyze. I > couldn't reproduce it. A friend of mine bought a <name deleted> SMP > machine to run NT on. He couldn't get NT to boot on that either, > without falling over shortly after booting. He had one of the top > developers in the NT division at his house analyzing crash dumps. > They concluded that the vendor had done something fishy in their > motherboard, and were trying to work it out with them. > > I would suspect the many hundreds of multi-processor Intel and Alpha > servers all over Microsoft, that simply run for many hundreds of days > (similar to any large Unix shop) give testament to this fact. As we were speaking in stability terms, let me tell you something: Just yesterday my SMP machine (has still pre-Lite2 code) crashed not because of the SMP part but rather because of the SCSI subsystem (some trouble with SCBs while intensive I/O); but before that it runned perfectly smooth for over 12 days. The point is that the guys working on FreeBSD are really set for an solid UNIX OS but they do this for fun and not for money. Also it's well worth mentioning that Microsoft has always carefully chosen their engineers... Despite Microsoft's marketing style (IMHO it's way too commercial) I think we should respect their specialists. > > Please be serious. A multi-billion-dollar multi-national company, > with some of the brightest software engineers in the industry is > betting its future on NT. You think FreeBSD's SMP is better? Hmm, it could be, I think there are some bright brains around FreeBSD, but right now we can't say that (not yet :). > > I'm not trying to knock FreeBSD -- obviously I've been a raving BSD > advocate for years. And I've been intending to pick up a used MP > machine or motherboard for some time, just so I can play with FreeBSD > SMP on it. And obviously there are many things about NT that are not > popular in this forum. However, sometimes we all need to step back, > and take a reality check, before diving into our passion. > > Hey, hate Microsoft all you want. Just realize that your hatred > doesn't automatically mean that Microsoft is full of incompetent > idiots. When they want to right good software, they have written some > very very good software. They do write good software, the FreeBSD team does a good job but then again they have their own bugs (just think about IExplorer 3.0), FreeBSD has enough weak points... It's a never ending story. > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@MindBender.serv.net > --< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >-- > NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3, > Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32... > NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others... > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- >
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