From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Mar 11 0:36:49 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from dragon.nuxi.com (trang.nuxi.com [209.152.133.57]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D93A337B718 for ; Sun, 11 Mar 2001 00:36:46 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from obrien@NUXI.com) Received: (from obrien@localhost) by dragon.nuxi.com (8.11.3/8.11.1) id f2B8aWd14823; Sun, 11 Mar 2001 00:36:32 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from obrien) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 00:36:31 -0800 From: "David O'Brien" To: Peter Seebach Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: if_fxp - the real point Message-ID: <20010311003631.A14559@dragon.nuxi.com> Reply-To: hackers@freebsd.org References: <20010310013331.A57865@earl-grey.cloud9.net> <200103101630.f2AGU8204557@guild.plethora.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <200103101630.f2AGU8204557@guild.plethora.net>; from seebs@plethora.net on Sat, Mar 10, 2001 at 10:30:08AM -0600 X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT Organization: The NUXI BSD group X-Pgp-Rsa-Fingerprint: B7 4D 3E E9 11 39 5F A3 90 76 5D 69 58 D9 98 7A X-Pgp-Rsa-Keyid: 1024/34F9F9D5 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message