Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 00:36:31 -0800 From: "David O'Brien" <TrimYourCc@NUXI.com> To: Peter Seebach <seebs@plethora.net> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: if_fxp - the real point Message-ID: <20010311003631.A14559@dragon.nuxi.com> In-Reply-To: <200103101630.f2AGU8204557@guild.plethora.net>; from seebs@plethora.net on Sat, Mar 10, 2001 at 10:30:08AM -0600 References: <20010310013331.A57865@earl-grey.cloud9.net> <200103101630.f2AGU8204557@guild.plethora.net>
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On Sat, Mar 10, 2001 at 10:30:08AM -0600, Peter Seebach wrote:
> For that matter, is the fxp still the most-recommended driver on Alpha?
It *never* has been the recommended driver on FreeBSD/Alpha. The fxp
driver has had issues on Alpha for a long time. Andrew will fix
something with it, then it breaks again for some, etc... DG has an
Alpha, but I don't think he has ever turned it on. He certainly has
never done and Alpha-specific fxp fixes that I am aware of.
The `guaranteed to work on Alpha driver' is anything supported by the
`de' driver, as that is what the built-in NIC is on older Alpha's so OS's
have no choice but deal with them. After that, I would say any of the
`xl' 3Com cards. Bill Paul tested his just about all his drivers on an
Alpha when developing them. The really nice thing about the `xl' 3Com
cards is they don't have the alignment requirements of most of the other
NICs in existence. Thus you can get really good performance on the
Alpha. Behind the `xl' 3Com cards, would be any DEC 21143 based NIC
which is supported by Bill Paul's `dc' driver. The nice thing about `de'
and `dc' cards is SRM recognizes them.
> I got the impression there were some alignment issues that
> might be cheaper to solve on i386 than Alpha.
Both `xl' and `fxp' cards do not have strict alignment issues (which
makes them very nice and reduces a memory copy). The problems with the
`fxp' cards is simply how its driver works on the Alpha.
--
-- David (obrien@FreeBSD.org)
GNU is Not Unix / Linux Is Not UniX
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