Date: Sat, 30 Nov 96 12:04:30 +0100 From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer) To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.EDU.AU Cc: Freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Other ports (Re: FreeBSD/MIPS anybody) Message-ID: <9611301104.AA22755@wavehh.hanse.de> References: <E0vThEF-0002fP-00@rover.village.org> <199611300546.QAA25227@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
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msmith@atrad.adelaide.EDU.AU (Michael Smith) wrote: >What strikes me as the biggest real problem is the highly >x86-optimised VM, and along with that perhaps the blurring of MI/MD >code in the FreeBSD kernel. >I've been studying the NetBSD code for a little while now, and it >strikes me just how much of the VM seems to be replicated from one >architecture to the next. Is this really necessary? How much of >the FreeBSD VM is actually x86-specific, and how much could >reasonably be moved out and reused by other architectures? Why do you claim netBSD rewrote its VM for each architecture. At least the parts affecting my bechmarks are quite similar in each :-) John Dyson will hopefully speak for himself, but he stated several times that most his VM work is not x86 specific. It is *FreeBSD*-specific and interfaced to several non-elegant FreeBSD constructs, that's what makes a port to FreeBSD and OpenBSD difficult. NetBSD reorganised major kernel parts several times, causing driver developers to cry. They claim it is needed to make live for other platforms easier respectivly port maintainers would start to maintain their own slightly modified versions of kernel parts, thus leading to maintainance nightmares. If FreeBSD is going to be ported to other architectures, I expect the need for a lot of reorganization/generalization in the FreeBSD kernel to arise. Otherwise, other ports than the main (x86) will have a code base with a full kernel source of their own (as does the SMP kernel for now). Martin -- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Martin_Cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org Fax.: +4940 5228536 "As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't ex- plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin
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