From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Apr 4 20:55:00 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id UAA22665 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Sat, 4 Apr 1998 20:55:00 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from euthyphro.uchicago.edu (euthyphro.uchicago.edu [128.135.21.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA22654 for ; Sat, 4 Apr 1998 20:54:49 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sfarrell@phaedrus.uchicago.edu) Received: from phaedrus.uchicago.edu (phaedrus [128.135.21.10]) by euthyphro.uchicago.edu (8.8.6/8.8.4) with ESMTP id WAA28946; Sat, 4 Apr 1998 22:54:32 -0600 (CST) Received: (from sfarrell@localhost) by phaedrus.uchicago.edu (8.8.8/8.8.5) id WAA02245; Sat, 4 Apr 1998 22:54:31 -0600 (CST) To: Michael Wyman Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Multi-processor systems. References: From: sfarrell+list@farrell.org Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.108) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Date: 04 Apr 1998 23:54:30 -0500 In-Reply-To: Michael Wyman's message of "Sat, 4 Apr 1998 22:26:43 -0600 (CST)" Message-ID: <87n2e0eum1.fsf@phaedrus.uchicago.edu> Lines: 35 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.6.3/XEmacs 20.3 - "Vatican City" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Michael Wyman 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