From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jun 18 23:06:33 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 989EC1065673 for ; Fri, 18 Jun 2010 23:06:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [65.122.17.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 734408FC16 for ; Fri, 18 Jun 2010 23:06:33 +0000 (UTC) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [65.122.17.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0CC0B46C0B; Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:06:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:06:32 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: "William D. Colburn (Schlake)" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 8.1 speed issues X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 23:06:33 -0000 On Fri, 18 Jun 2010, William D. Colburn (Schlake) wrote: > So I've just upgraded from whatever was stable in 2004 to 8.1 (it's a > private file server in my house, I pay no attention to it until it crashes), > and uh, the speed difference is very noticeable. In short, it's like I > bought a brand new machine that eleven times as fast when all I did was > upgrade the OS. How on earth did you guys make such a dramatic improvement? Well, I guess the good news is that we did a lot in six years. The bad news is that figuring out which changes helped your specific configuration and workload would be quite tricky. Certainly, our work on SMP optimization for scheduling, network stack, threading, storage, etc, has been a big deal. Thre are also countless protocol improvements in TCP/IP, significant changes in file system code, ... that could well be involved. Needless to say, it's satisfying to hear that it worked out -- I'd like to think we have even further good stuff coming in 9! Robert