Date: 04 Apr 1998 23:54:30 -0500 From: sfarrell+list@farrell.org To: Michael Wyman <wyma0012@tc.umn.edu> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Multi-processor systems. Message-ID: <87n2e0eum1.fsf@phaedrus.uchicago.edu> In-Reply-To: Michael Wyman's message of "Sat, 4 Apr 1998 22:26:43 -0600 (CST)" References: <Pine.SOL.3.96.980404222242.20427A-100000@garnet.tc.umn.edu>
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Michael Wyman <wyma0012@tc.umn.edu> writes: > I have a Dual-P166 machine, and am looking into getting a Unix system (as > Win95 and NT are having problems). I wasn't able to find anything in the > FAQs about multi-processor systems... > > Does FreeBSD support dual processors, and if so, what kind of efficiency > does the second processor get? Both FreeBSD and linux contain support for SMP, though for freebsd, support is only in the in-development, unstable version. In the stable linux release, SMP essentially involves a global mutex around the kernel--i.e., only one CPU can be in kernel mode at a time. This, of course, is great for cpu intensive apps, but not for i/o and other apps that make a lot of syscalls, etc. The stable freebsd release has NO support for SMP. Both freebsd and linux have in-development versions with high granularity locking that should be quite efficient. More information for freebsd is at: http://www.freebsd.org/~fsmp/SMP/SMP.html But this looks kind of old--might want to subscribe to the freebsd-smp mailing list for more current info. I'm not sure which one will reach maturity first... my impression is that linux is somewhat ahead (maybe 6 months?) here, but I might be wrong. Of course, linux's idea of "maturity" is a little less stringent then freebsd's (imho, of course)... -- Steve Farrell To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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