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Date:      Wed, 05 Nov 2003 17:44:16 -0500 (EST)
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Jesse Guardiani <jesse@wingnet.net>
Cc:        freebsd-smp@freebsd.org
Subject:   RE: SMPng question
Message-ID:  <XFMail.20031105174416.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <boba8u$7f2$1@sea.gmane.org>

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On 05-Nov-2003 Jesse Guardiani wrote:
> Howdy list,
> 
> I have a few questions about FreeBSD's in-progress
> SMPng project. I've read much of the literature on
> the FreeBSD site about SMPng, and I've taken the time
> to go through the project status pages and look at the
> work that has already been done and the work yet to be
> done here:
> 
>     http://www.freebsd.org/smp/index.html
>     http://www.freebsd.org/projects/busdma/index.html
> 
> But I'm still unclear about a few things:
> 
> 1.) What, exactly, are SMPng's advantages over the current
>     SMP implementation as related to userland apps?
> 
>     In other words, I know that the network stack and devices
>     and such will benefit by being able to make use of
>     multiple CPUs, but will normal non-multi-threaded apps
>     be able to use multiple CPUs? Or will an app still have
>     to be multi-threaded in order to take full advantage
>     of an SMP box?

This is more the realm of the KSE project than SMPng.  KSE aims
to allow multiple threads from the same process to run concurrently
on separate CPUs.  You can get more details about KSE on the threads@
list, but AFAIK it is basically done in current.

> 2.) And, perhaps as an extension to question #1: Will I
>     be able to make use of multiple CPUs to compile programs?
> 
>     Could I buy one of those cheap $300 quad Xeon 500mhz
>     compaq boxes on ebay and use it as a 2 Ghz compiler box?

It won't quite be a 2ghz box, maybe more like a 1.2 or 1.5 ghz box or
so, but for compiles it is faster than a UP box.

-- 

John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/



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