Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 02:42:42 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: diz@cafes.net (Mike Eldridge) Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Lynx test / 2nd attempt Message-ID: <200012080242.TAA01635@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10012061752340.27008-100000@mail.cafes.net> from "Mike Eldridge" at Dec 06, 2000 05:58:03 PM
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> > Zero, without access to SRM sources. > > Gee, Mike, that's quite a lashing tongue you have. :) > > What's to stop anyone from writing their own SRM? Reverse engineering? > Is it against the license? Does SRM even have a license? Mike's always a bit terse; don't hold it against him. The main problem is that you have to have different firmware for different machines. The Linux MILO stuff uses a beta version of a firmware for which sources are available, but doesn't have the x86 emulator code in it anyway. The main problem with taking the Linux approach is that FreeBSD depends on some firmware (actually, microcode) support that's standard in SRM, but wasn't in the beta code. Linux has a much more generic VM management system, and has to do a lot of things in software in a lot of machine cycles, which could otherwise be accomplished in firmware in a much smaller number of cycles. FWIW, the "extra" support that FreeBSD depends upon over and above the support provided by the beta code Linux uses is why FreeBSD won't boot using the MILO supplied firmware (which would let it boot everywhere Linux does, at a potentially unacceptable overall loss of performance). License: The SRM code is seperately licensed, and costs extra money. At one time, DEC was pushing NT; now that the Alpha is no longer a supported NT platform, the SRM code _still_ has extra license costs associated with it, and which Compaq hasn't really adequately explained the logic behind. The best guess I have is that there is a contractual obligation behind it, and that the obligation didn't expore at the same time Alpha NT expired, even though the base reason was probably to inflate the price of TRU64 UNIX, as well as creating some "NT-only" machines, in order to promote NT. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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