From owner-freebsd-smp Tue Jun 20 12:36:26 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-smp@freebsd.org Received: from lor.watermarkgroup.com (lor.watermarkgroup.com [207.202.73.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E717137B7C4 for ; Tue, 20 Jun 2000 12:36:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from luoqi@watermarkgroup.com) Received: (from luoqi@localhost) by lor.watermarkgroup.com (8.10.1/8.10.1) id e5KJZhE04172; Tue, 20 Jun 2000 15:35:43 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 15:35:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Luoqi Chen Message-Id: <200006201935.e5KJZhE04172@lor.watermarkgroup.com> To: dillon@apollo.backplane.com, freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SMP discussion moving to freebsd-smp Cc: grog@lemis.com Sender: owner-freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > Right now the SP build works because I am allowing (unthreaded) interrupts > to steal the idleproc's context, and that only works because they can > get the giant mutex without blocking (remember, the BSDI giant mutex > is a blocking mutex, not a spin mutex). In the MP build the interrupts > need to be able to block getting the giant mutex which means we need > to implement heavy-weight interrupt threads at the very least before > we can get anything working, because we are not allowed to block in > the idleproc. > May I suggest we first make the giant mutex a spin mutex (as our good old giant kernel lock) and focus on the SP first? In the mean time, MP should continue to work, as only one processor is allowed in the kernel. Once the SP is stablized, we start to tackle the MP build. -lq To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message