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Date:      Thu, 6 Jun 2002 19:23:29 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Mike Silbersack <silby@silby.com>
To:        j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>
Cc:        John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>, <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: SMP/5.0 performance on single CPU?
Message-ID:  <20020606191745.V3036-100000@patrocles.silby.com>
In-Reply-To: <20020607011035.B79818@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>

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On Fri, 7 Jun 2002, j mckitrick wrote:

> | almost all of the kernel.  However, the SMP work is still in progress and
> | it will get better as time goes on.  One thing to note is that in 4.x,
>
> Well, I'm trying to decide if I should make the leap to 5.0 when it
> comes out (my early adopter side talking) or wait around for a rev or 2
> (my -stable side talking).  I'm leaning toward waiting, since I depend
> on my system for so much (it's my only box) and I also don't think I
> have the time to learn the new details of 5.0 just yet.
>
> Thanks for the comments, John.
>
> NOTE: Please CC me, as I am not currently subscribed.  Thanks.
>
> jm

To be honest, I don't think that SMP threading should be a consideration
for anyone when 5.0-release rolls around.  Yes, once it's fully fleshed
out it will be a nice performance gain for SMP users.  At the same time, I
doubt that it will be much of slowdown for UP users, and I don't think
that it will be any slower than 4.x SMP.

On the other hand, there are numerous new features (GEOM, TrustedBSD,
OpenPAM, Snapshots + background fsck, etc) being implemented in 5.x that
will never be MFC'd to 4.x due to their complexity.  These features (and
whathever other ones pop up) are the ones you should evaulate the
usefulness of 5.0 with.

If none of the features are that useful to you, then by all means stick
with 4.7 or whatever we're up to when 5.0-release comes out.  I'm sure
that the 4.x branch will continue to exist for a long while, and that
you'll have plenty of company there.  In reality, we don't know what 5.0
will look like come November.  If you'd asked me back in January, I would
have had a very pessimistic outlook.  However, much work has been done in
the last two months; if work continues at this rate, 5.0 will have
significant advantages for many people.

Mike "Silby" Silbersack



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