From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 5 19:35:41 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id E2C2BA00 for ; Wed, 5 Feb 2014 19:35:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-qa0-x22b.google.com (mail-qa0-x22b.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:400d:c00::22b]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 998ED100B for ; Wed, 5 Feb 2014 19:35:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-qa0-f43.google.com with SMTP id o15so1268209qap.16 for ; Wed, 05 Feb 2014 11:35:39 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject :from:to:cc:content-type; bh=BvIv87+LceIUwFVxXtU4mz77vOo67KhK4N+vYbnT2QA=; b=Km4N0plHB28M4CvZsivnn5rRs5aYoHv9pkYbX3Wo4+g2LecwyJfgn8GYTnSZsdSTa7 RsRKzWXemMuswgzubSKByb9CWSghvpmPLkPgSl1/iBypj8bsB3ytuoV+GUNH2NOPSOJY VuacGc4EGuQOTWlF3xuMQP6RqY0chmR5QbnAHyfus3G8wjIvmhTd9z19EIQ6xJElMlz6 2x0V23c/KU13a7+rzpaFutNtXMaYOjTdCDVlVyKiWqtocVKgGIUt6fBUCXr/pb1ldK6t SemOA8JtUb+GbJCobtAjNH5KMPho9zdnx9NMHN8w2co7NBXOAJjc//fYa5FhGkJjBGSJ erLA== MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.229.171.8 with SMTP id f8mr5770371qcz.13.1391628939812; Wed, 05 Feb 2014 11:35:39 -0800 (PST) Sender: adrian.chadd@gmail.com Received: by 10.224.52.8 with HTTP; Wed, 5 Feb 2014 11:35:39 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: References: <1391538649.19169.79261269.3C5F49D1@webmail.messagingengine.com> <493DEB39-C4B4-409E-B8B2-B1B11E013754@netgate.com> <60555.1391549390@critter.freebsd.dk> <23B18B88-D888-46B3-99F6-905F86E20FAF@netgate.com> Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2014 11:35:39 -0800 X-Google-Sender-Auth: wSohSRVKNvD0uFCQi0z4G_AVHsI Message-ID: Subject: Re: opteron a1100 arm From: Adrian Chadd To: Kevin Bowling Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Cc: "freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org" X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2014 19:35:41 -0000 On 5 February 2014 10:11, Kevin Bowling wrote: > On 2/5/2014 6:44 AM, Jim Thompson wrote: >> >> >> >>> On Feb 5, 2014, at 1:55, Kevin Bowling wrote: >>> >> [...] >> >>> Where A1100 wins hands down is memory capacity, and possibly even memory >>> bandwidth (DDR4 mentioned in the PR..). >>> >>> Intel's server Atom chips and even the extremely powerful Xeon E3 are >>> quite limited by 32GB RAM (and it's also somewhat expensive vs RDIMMs). >> >> >> I'm not sure what your point is. > > > Simply that this is a better chip than Intel's current low end offerings > because all relevant bandwidths are much higher (RAM, I/O, net) and these > matter more to many DC workloads. > > >> The C2750, C2550, C2558 & C2758 will all address 64 GB of DDR3 RAM. >> >> You'll have to use Registered DIMMs and likely drop back to DDR3 to get to >> 128GB on the A1100. >> >> So I see parity in terms of addressable RAM. > > > That's half, and a big deal if you want to run multiple VMs or a large ARC > or many large JVM heaps or any number of other things. You're trying to > claim the chip is already matched by the current Atom, where it is clearly > not, so I'll fire it back at you - I'm not sure what your point is. > > I'm happy to see the announcement and am looking forward to running FreeBSD > on the platform with others. But that's not enough - some one / some company has to step up and do a port, then run with it long enough in -HEAD to make it stable for general use. Almost all of the ARM stuff in FreeBSD doesn't fall under this category. It's getting better, but in a lot of instances the ports are done for very specific chipsets and/or use cases and that doesn't stress the rest of the system out enough. The MIPS port went through this too, FWIW - it initially was stable if you never bothered doing much in userland, but userland suffered from a lot of random hilarity. so if you were a router that occasionally ran ntpd, it was great. If you were an AP that kept going into hostapd to do things, it would get upset. "make all install clean" in a port directory wasn't great. It was only through repeated head-slamming from Warner, Juli and others that this stuff got ironed out enough. So, I'm all for the platform - who's going to port it? Step up please and be cheered. :-P -a