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Date:      Mon, 08 Jan 2024 17:36:56 +0000
From:      Thomas Sparrevohn <Thomas.Sparrevohn@me.com>
To:        Kyle Evans <kevans@FreeBSD.org>, <freebsd-arm@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Freebsd on M1 Macs
Message-ID:  <EA4B9A45-EE8F-405D-B53F-7B76FD268BDC@me.com>
In-Reply-To: <3651f45a-a96a-4816-b8fe-5e239e08af22@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <7a13c63d-a50b-429c-a481-0693e9faaf6b@gmail.com> <1536d845-9073-4f9b-96f6-fa9647536c00@gmail.com> <3651f45a-a96a-4816-b8fe-5e239e08af22@FreeBSD.org>

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As I said to Joe in a previous post - I am personally quite impressed of ho=
w easy it was go get up and running - granted it crashes with >8 Cores - but=
 Under parallels it ran well - making a very long term BSD user very very ha=
ppy - Looking at both Linux and NetBSD - (NetBSD randomly freezes with >8 Co=
res) but both seems doggy when it comes to how it handles efficiency cores. =
What got me to go back to FreeBSD - was=20

A) I really miss it but since I got rid of my PC's there seems to be no opt=
ion
B) I do understand the codebase=20
C) Nobody seems to have a consistent approach to scheduling=20

E.g. Mac OS X uses QoS to control affinity, everybody else uses "affinity" =
- but "setaffinity" seems like taking a hammer to the schedular - So I wante=
d to understand. ARM as such is a bit of a mess in as much there are a very =
varied number of CPU and designs - but at the same time this is why ARM is s=
uch an interesting design. But Personally I am still a bit unsure what acron=
ym  or branding covers platform. Looking at two different - if somewhat exot=
ic applications - E.g. A mainframe emulator and GNU APL who both hard relies=
 on the assumption that binding to a specific CPU will give you the best per=
formance, personally I think that assumption is the intellectually the same =
as running everything under rtprio    - it seems that assumptions are being =
made in the wild that will break once you have asymmetric CPU's - So I think=
 we - I mean the FreeBSD camp -  has some work to do - If POSIX or others co=
dify the state of "Now" we end up with the same mess as pthreads ended up be=
ing.=20

After all that I really wanted to thank everybody who has worked on ARM for=
 allowing me to get back to having FreeBSD running on my daily workhorse - i=
t's really a work well done

Regards
	Thomas =20

=EF=BB=BFOn 26/11/2023, 23:52, "Kyle Evans" <owner-freebsd-arm@freebsd.org <mailt=
o:owner-freebsd-arm@freebsd.org> on behalf of kevans@FreeBSD.org <mailto:kev=
ans@FreeBSD.org>> wrote:


On 11/26/23 16:04, Jason Bacon wrote:
> On 11/26/23 13:22, Joe B wrote:
>>
>> I know this is a longshot but I'm going to ask I know MacOS is a BSD=20
>> but we all know it's very sugarcoated and doesn't look like a BSD.
>>
>> Question will real freeBSD ever come to the m1 Mac's. I got a 16 inch=20
>> mbp with good specs just taking up space right now
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> ~ Joe B
>=20
> I assume you've seen https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon <https://wiki.=
freebsd.org/AppleSilicon>. Not sure=20
> how up-to-date it is. The wikis tend to lag behind reality in my=20
> experience.
>=20


Yeah, this is a bit out of date. SMP and watchdog bits are good, along=20
with some subset of the USB ports (IOMMU is a WIP). With the branch I'm=20
working on right now, we can go full multi-user on a USB root. Work
stalled for a bit because there was a general disagreement with how we=20
integrated parts of the interrupt control into the interrupt framework,=20
but I've been given a vision recently of a clear path forward, so=20
hopefully we can move forward with that and unblock upstreaming some of=20
the other bits.


Thanks,


Kyle Evans









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