From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Feb 4 12:26:21 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A14F637B401 for ; Tue, 4 Feb 2003 12:26:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from haldjas.folklore.ee (Haldjas.folklore.ee [193.40.6.121]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A3D9943F3F for ; Tue, 4 Feb 2003 12:26:18 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee) Received: from haldjas.folklore.ee (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by haldjas.folklore.ee (8.12.3/8.11.3) with ESMTP id h14KQ0Os097470; Tue, 4 Feb 2003 22:26:00 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee) Received: from localhost (narvi@localhost) by haldjas.folklore.ee (8.12.3/8.12.3/Submit) with ESMTP id h14KPvDk097467; Tue, 4 Feb 2003 22:25:58 +0200 (EET) Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 22:25:57 +0200 (EET) From: Narvi To: "Kurt J. Lidl" Cc: Matthew Dillon , Subject: Re: Lower power SMP boxes? In-Reply-To: <20030201145121.B9269@pix.net> Message-ID: <20030204222414.N43637-100000@haldjas.folklore.ee> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, Kurt J. Lidl wrote: > On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 11:21:49AM -0800, Matthew Dillon wrote: > > :On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 10:17:23AM +0100, Mats Larsson wrote: > > :> Via just recently announced their new Nehemiah processor capable of smp, > > :> presumably slow as its precursor but also the lowest power consuming > > :> processor at the market (at least with standard socket fcpga motherboard) > > :[...] > > :> http://www.via.com.tw/en/viac3/c3.jsp > > : > > :It says "IO/APIC support in future versions". So, it's not an SMP option > > :today, as I understand it. > > : > > :-Kurt > > > > Although, this is more a deficiency in the way FreeBSD is designed. Using > > an APIC is nice, but not absolutely necessary. All we need are good > > specs on how VIA's SMP cpus interact with each other and we could > > support it. > > How else are you going to do the physical interrupt steering? > Unless they have gone through the effort of implementing a whole > new and different steering mechanism -- which would fly in the face > of having off-the-shelf OS support from the people in Redmond, at > the very least. > At least at some point there was a thing called OpenPIC which the then big two alternative x86 processor vendors AMD and Cyrix promised to support. In practice I believe it ever only got used on one or two PPC boards. > > I like the 11 watts specified in the paper. That *is* low power for > > the class of system they are selling. I don't see a clock specification > > but I assume it is going to be at least as fast as the ~900MHz M-9000. > > It says "the new generation VIA C3 processor is available at speeds starting > at 1GHz" in the paragraph under "Enhanced Digital Media Performance". > > -Kurt > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message