From owner-freebsd-arch Sat Oct 12 0:14:55 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C97837B401 for ; Sat, 12 Oct 2002 00:14:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from softweyr.com (softweyr.com [65.88.244.127]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7EAD843E88 for ; Sat, 12 Oct 2002 00:14:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from nextgig-11.access.nethere.net ([66.63.140.203] helo=softweyr.com) by softweyr.com with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1) id 180GTn-0001rd-00; Sat, 12 Oct 2002 01:14:31 -0600 Message-ID: <3DA7CE9B.97BD3989@softweyr.com> Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 00:26:19 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Terry Lambert Cc: Nate Lawson , "Vladimir B. Grebenschikov" , arch@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: using mem above 4Gb was: swapon some regular file References: <3DA35D58.B1B5D78D@mindspring.com> <3DA4C2F1.74450081@softweyr.com> <3DA4C7EC.F749B803@mindspring.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Terry Lambert wrote: > > Wes Peters wrote: > > Terry Lambert wrote: > > > IMO, if you want a larger linear address space, instead of pretending > > > you have one, buy yourself an IA64 instead. > > > > Or an Alpha, or a SPARC64, or a MIPS64, etc. But they all seem to cost > > more than a PIII solution, except perhaps a Netra and you can't cram enough > > RAM in that to make a difference. > > People always say this, but... the Alpha is unsuitable, because > FreeBSD on the Alpha doesn't support more than 2G of physical > RAM, because the drivers choke. The MIPS is not an option, > because though there is a FreeBSD port, as reported at last > year's "developer summit" at Usenix, it was never integrated into > the source tree. The SPARC64 isn't a mainstream port yet (I know > this because my patch to kdenetwork3 was adulterated to be "if Alpha", > when it should have been adulterated to "if !32_bit_x86", if at all, > because the SPARC64 and IA64 GOT will go over 64K, as well... the > problem is the 64bit vs. 32bit values, not symbol names, etc., that > causes the table size to be bigger there). > > Right now, IA64 is about the only supported 64 bit architecture > that gives you the real benefit of a 64 bit address space; I guess > you can mmap a lot of stuff on the Alpha, too, up to your KVA > mapping limit, but that's not a win for this application. There aren't any architectural issues on the SPARC64 itself that prevent it from being a fully 64 bit system. It will take a while before FreeBSD developers catch up with the idea of 64-bitness. If you want to help, find a way to get more 64 bit systems into developers hands. Got a secret cache of Netras hiding somewhere you just have to get rid of? ;^) At least you can buy a brand-new, supported SPARC64 machine from Sun for < $1000 (in the USA). Two, in fact: the Sun Blade V100, and the Netra, nee Sun Fire V100. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message