Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:01:15 +0100 From: Bernd Walter <ticso@cicely12.cicely.de> To: Wilko Bulte <wb@freebie.xs4all.nl> Cc: "Greg A. Woods" <woods@weird.com> Subject: Re: FYI, no-go with booting FreeBSD-5.3 on AlphaServer ES40 Message-ID: <20041210220114.GQ63234@cicely12.cicely.de> In-Reply-To: <20041210211612.GA90601@freebie.xs4all.nl> References: <m1CcZTT-0024g4C@building.weird.com> <20041210202803.GI90137@freebie.xs4all.nl> <m1CcrzH-0024gJC@building.weird.com> <20041210211612.GA90601@freebie.xs4all.nl>
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On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 10:16:12PM +0100, Wilko Bulte wrote: > On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 04:07:39PM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote.. > > [ On Friday, December 10, 2004 at 21:28:03 (+0100), Wilko Bulte wrote: ] > > > Subject: Re: FYI, no-go with booting FreeBSD-5.3 on AlphaServer ES40 > > > > > > FreeBSD does not even support 4GB so don't moan... :-P > > > > Sigh.... > > > > Any ES40 with fewer than 4 memory options installed (i.e. 8GB _minimum_) > > is a huge waste of space, energy, and money. With just 2 RAM options > > installed (i.e. 4GB minimum), the machine is way under-utilized and can > > only achieve 1/2 its memory throughput. With just one RAM option > > installed (i.e. 2GB minimum), the machine crawls at 1/4 its potential > > memory throughput. > > > > There are many better, faster, cheaper, smaller, types of systems > > available if one does not need to break the 4GB 32-bit address space > > boundary. > > I know. Feel free to fix it. I have an implementation that should work for ES40 as well, but unfortunately there are some bugs I hadn't time to find yet. I thought about splitting it up and start commiting a few structural changes soon so FreeBSD at least knows it's limitations and can automatically reduce physical memory until the implementation is working. Since someone recently brought up some problems with isp driver it might also be very well that this got me into troubles since booting failed with the isp controller IIRC. > > I.e. I guess FreeBSD doesn't really truly support the ES40 (or anything > > bigger) at all. You should definitely not list them as supported! I'm > > That is bull, as I did run FreeBSD on the ES40 at work. Briefly, as > it is not my machine. > > > sure anyone else familiar with Alphas would make the same assumption as > > You should not make assumptions, it is documented that dependent on the > machine model the limit is 1 or 2GB for FreeBSD. > > > I have that the full RAM configurations of any supported machine would > > work -- that's the whole reason for wanting a 64-bit address space in > > the first place! > > Yep, it would be very nice. We already have 53 bit virtual address space, just not physical. I already used more then 4G address space - even on NoName. -- B.Walter BWCT http://www.bwct.de bernd@bwct.de info@bwct.de
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