From owner-freebsd-smp Sat Apr 5 09:27:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA17693 for smp-outgoing; Sat, 5 Apr 1997 09:27:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from spinner.DIALix.COM (root@spinner.dialix.com [192.203.228.67]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA17687; Sat, 5 Apr 1997 09:27:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from spinner.DIALix.COM (peter@localhost.DIALix.oz.au [127.0.0.1]) by spinner.DIALix.COM (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id BAA18615; Sun, 6 Apr 1997 01:26:51 +0800 (WST) Message-Id: <199704051726.BAA18615@spinner.DIALix.COM> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0gamma 1/27/96 To: "Gary Palmer" cc: cr@jcmax.com (Cyrus Rahman), smp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Questions about mp_lock In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 05 Apr 1997 12:13:41 EST." <12968.860260421@orion.webspan.net> Date: Sun, 06 Apr 1997 01:26:50 +0800 From: Peter Wemm Sender: owner-smp@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk "Gary Palmer" wrote: > Peter Wemm wrote in message ID > <199704051704.BAA18422@spinner.DIALix.COM>: > > Moving the kernel locking up a layer and having a seperate entry/exit lock > > in the trap/syscall/interupt area would be a major win without too much > > cost. What we'd gain by that would be that we could then gradually move > > to a per-subsystem locking system perhaps based initially on which syscall > > or trap type. It'd be quite possible to have one cpu in the kernel doing > > IP checksumming on a packet, another in the vfs system somewhere, another > > doing some copy-on-write page copies in the vm system and so on. Things > > like getpid() would need no locking whatsoever. But that's for later once > > the basics are working. > > Question if you would: define`basics'? Umm, things like having it understand the pci bus in apic mode on new machines without having to tweak the code, or having IPI's sent to evict processes from other cpu's when the trying to give it a kill -9, having the system boot into multi-cpu mode without sysctl, being able to build world with /sys pointing to the smp tree, having per-cpu scratch space, and a zillion other things that would be nice. Oh, and having a working smp-capable lock manager would be nice too. :-) > Thanks, > > Gary > -- > Gary Palmer FreeBSD Core Team Member > FreeBSD: Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info Cheers, -Peter