Date: Thu, 04 Dec 1997 12:10:47 -0700 From: Steve Passe <smp@csn.net> To: Philippe Regnauld <regnauld@deepo.prosa.dk> Cc: dg@root.com, FreeBSD-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 3.0 -release ? Message-ID: <199712041910.MAA13997@Ilsa.StevesCafe.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 04 Dec 1997 12:34:19 %2B0100." <19971204123419.09270@deepo.prosa.dk>
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Hi, > My _personal_ opinion is that merging SMP into -current had one > inevitable side-effect that maybe not many people thought about: > > SMP is one _BIG_ lump to digest, and since it's not likely > to be "retro-fitted" in -stable (unless many little green men > come and help -- and maintain it after), it becomes the biggest > single step to get over to reach the next release bump. > > In a way, merging SMP has had a braking effect on release speed, > but has not slowed down development in other places. > > 3.0 will be one _hell_ of a milestone. Very well stated. My "best wild guess" about SMP is that there is at least 6-9 person-months of work (probably more) before we meet David's benchmark: >There are two things >that need to be done: locks need to be pushed down so that we have at >least per-subsystem locking (networking, filesystems, VM system, etc), >and we need to rewrite the scheduler for process affinity. I am in agreement with this target, but given the current level of work, this will occur about 2-3 years from now! We need more people actually willing to do some coding and/or testing. I have come to the conclusion (from (non)working experiments) that some fundimental changes will need to be made to the kernel, primarily tossing the spl mechanisms and using mutexs. I am trying to get a serious design discussion on SMP going in smp@freebsd.org, anyone is encouraged to join us there if they wish to participate. Although somewhat stale, there are many useful links to whitepapers on SMP in: http://www.freebsd.org/~fsmp/SMP/SMP.html -- Steve Passe | powered by smp@csn.net | Symmetric MultiProcessor FreeBSD
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