From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Feb 1 11:51:26 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 32A1F37B401 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 2003 11:51:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from meketrex.pix.net (meketrex.pix.net [192.111.45.13]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D24A243F43 for ; Sat, 1 Feb 2003 11:51:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from lidl@meketrex.pix.net) Received: (from lidl@localhost) by meketrex.pix.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) id h11JpLT09440; Sat, 1 Feb 2003 14:51:21 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 14:51:21 -0500 From: "Kurt J. Lidl" To: Matthew Dillon Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Lower power SMP boxes? Message-ID: <20030201145121.B9269@pix.net> References: <200301312312.h0VNC5bQ007170@apollo.backplane.com> <20030201101041.H16130@marvin.sko.mh.se> <20030201123303.A6376@pix.net> <200302011921.h11JLnrk016623@apollo.backplane.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <200302011921.h11JLnrk016623@apollo.backplane.com>; from dillon@apollo.backplane.com on Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 11:21:49AM -0800 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, 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. > 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