Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 17 Aug 1999 11:03 -0600
From:      "Brian McGroarty" <BMCGROARTY@high-voltage.com>
To:        "Corrado Cau" <ccau@itsyn.it>, "freebsd-smp" <freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   RE:  -current and SMP
Message-ID:  <36685390B950D31186D50008C7333C82@high-voltage.com>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> From: Corrado Cau [mailto:ccau@itsyn.it]
>
> I'm following with the greatest interest the recent
> discussions about how to
> better and make more robust the SMP version of FreeBSD,
> especially about
> processor affinity. In my opinion this is a cornerstone of a good SMP
> implementation.
>
> Did some of the fixes make it into the more recent -current
> snapshots? or we
> still are at patches level?
>
> btw, I found an interesting "how-to" about SMP on linux.com.
> Ban me from
> freebsd-* if you wish :-), but there is way too little
> documentation on SMP
> around and that article was quite appealing to me.
> (http://linux.com/howto/Parallel-Processing-HOWTO-1.html)


These may prove useful:

* Introduction to Parallel Computing: Design and Analysis of Algorithms
* Kumar, Grama, Gupta and Karypis

This provides a good overview of the issues you'll need to resolve in
parellelization, both hardware and algorithmic. Chapter 4 neatly outlines
some of the concerns already expressed in this thread.

Of particular interest (to me) is chapter 12: 'Systolic Algorithms and their
Mapping onto Parallel Computers.' Maximizing usage of the 'cells' in that
chapter provides a good correlation to achieving smooth and uninterrupted
audiovisual output.


* Parallel Numerical Algorithms
* Freeman & Phillips

As the title implies, its primary focus is on parallel algorithms. Some of
these look very threadable, some are not. After Terry's comment on the
desirability of spreading threads for one process across multiple CPUs, I got
the idea that it would be interesting to try to detect when this is and isn't
beneficial. I'm looking to create a few realistic use cases that cross the
spectrum of regularity and granularity of MESI shared memory faults.


* Unix Systems for Modern Architectures: Symmetric Multiprocesssing and
Caching for Kernel Programmers

I've got this on order from Amazon.com - I'll drop a note when I've given
that a first review.


I plan on developing my next game title under FreeBSD, although Windows and
Playstation 2 are the target platforms. Hopefully I'll be able to sell the
company on publishing Linux and FreeBSD versions of the title on the Windows
disc.

I can use FreeBSD's SMP support for better performance of our prototype code
and once I've better learned FreeBSD (I'm working through McKusick's kernel
tapes as I can afford them) I want to work on real time thread scheduling
extensions and overall SMP scheduling efficiency if nobody else has tackled
them first.



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?36685390B950D31186D50008C7333C82>